The Black Heart Crypt

  Malik and Azalea came over to Zack’s house around six.

  It was already dark out.

  They joined Zack and Aunt Ginny downstairs in the rumpus room, where Zack was teaching the seventy-seven-year-old how to play Madden NFL Football on his PlayStation 3. Judy and Zack’s dad were at the mall with Aunts Hannah and Sophie, hoping to find “more suitable pillows.”

  And a hot water bottle.

  Aunt Sophie wanted one of those, even though Zack had no idea why anybody would want to drink their water hot.

  Zipper was down in the basement, too—basically lying low. When a cat slapped you five, it hurt. Especially if they slapped you a face five.

  “I need help putting together my Halloween costume,” said Azalea, slumping down into a beat-up old recliner, while, on the couch, Aunt Ginny thumbed her controller and power-smacked Zack’s quarterback into fumbling the ball.

  “I’m all set,” said Malik, who was sitting on the floor, Zipper’s head in his lap. “I’m going as a killer bee.”

  “Huh?” said Zack, watching Aunt Ginny’s lineman on the TV screen as he scooped up the fumbled football and scored a touchdown.

  “I cut a big letter ‘B’ out of yellow poster board and splattered it with red paint. I will, of course, also carry a bloody rubber knife.”

  “Clever,” said Azalea. “A killer ‘B.’ Wish I’d thought of that.”

  Aunt Ginny put down her game controller. “So, Azalea. What would you like to … be?”

  Azalea chuckled. “I dunno. I was thinking about maybe a gypsy or the bride of Dracula.”

  “Both very good choices, dear. I have an idea: Why don’t you three run upstairs and rummage through my trunk? I brought along all sorts of scarves and skirts, bangles and baubles.”

  “May I ask why?” inquired Malik.

  “Well, dear, I never unpack my footlocker. Just keep stuffing new items into it as I continue my journey through life’s grand adventure. Why, I haven’t emptied that trunk since the 1970s! It’s filled with things I have long since forgotten.”

  “So why do you keep them, then?” asked Azalea.

  “Because, dear, you just never know when a new friend might need a quick Halloween costume.”

  It looked like an underwear bomb had gone off in Zack’s bedroom.

  A gigantic bra was draped over his desk chair. A pair of flowery underpants, the size of a bathroom rug, lay on the floor. Some other lacy stuff, embroidered with flowers and butterflies, spilled out of his dresser drawers.

  Azalea found a crystal spray bottle on top of Zack’s bedside table and spritzed it.

  Then she started coughing and choking.

  “Old-person perfume alert,” she gasped. “Total gag juice.”

  “Look at all this neat junk!” said Malik, who was merrily rummaging through the summer-camp-sized footlocker, the sides of which were stickered with decals from exotic locations. “Scarves, hats, costume jewelry, a turban of some sort, leather-bound books, a pouch full of sparkling powder, a whole box of white candles or flares or something …”

  Zack and Azalea knelt down on the carpet beside Malik and started going through the stuff with him. Zipper hadn’t joined them on the trek upstairs. He was on cat-attack alert down in the rumpus room with Aunt Ginny, who had announced that she might take a quick “snoozle on the couch,” which, she explained, was the same thing as a nap.

  Pyewacket, Aunt Ginny’s cat, who had been sleeping in a lump under the bed’s comforter, came padding over to the trunk and hopped inside the box to help the three friends paw through the layers of fascinating junk.

  “Don’t tell Zipper,” said Azalea, “but I think cats are awesome.”

  “Me too,” said Malik, stroking the pink-nosed cat on her head.

  “This is so cool,” said Azalea, pulling out a turban and trying it on. “I could be like a gypsy mind reader.”

  “Yeah,” said Zack. “Look—here’s a deck of tarot cards to go with it.”

  “And this star necklace would work, too,” said Malik. “It’s a pentagram, because it has five points, the same way a pentagon has five sides.”

  Azalea draped the pendant around her neck. “So, Zack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What are you going to go as for Halloween?”

  “Oh. I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t know.”

  “Huh?”

  “I may not get to go trick-or-treating this year.”

  “What?”

  “You know—the ghost thing. Halloween being their busiest night and all. That’s why my aunts are here.”

  “To go trick-or-treating for you?” said Malik.

  “No. My dad said Aunt Ginny helped him a bunch, back when he was a kid and could see ghosts. Thinks maybe she can help me.”

  “Hey, you guys,” said Azalea. “I have an idea—what if we just do that Nightmare on Main Street deal? I don’t think any ghosts could hurt you there, not with that many people around.”

  “Yeah,” said Zack. “My dad suggested that, too. You guys wouldn’t think it’s too lame?”

  “Uh, no,” said Azalea. “Not if there’s free candy. Stores always give out the best junk, anyway. Oh, this is so cool!” She pulled a large crystal shaped like a cat out of the trunk. “This could be my gypsy mind reader’s familiar.”

  “What’s a familiar?” asked Malik.

  “It’s an animal that helps a witch or a magician.”

  “Fascinating,” said Malik. “I did not know that.”

  “I read a lot of Wiccan crap like that during my Goth phase.”

  Pyewacket meowed at Malik.

  “Wow!” he said.

  “What?” said Zack and Azalea.

  “Check out this nifty puzzle!” Malik held up what looked like a polished black stone heart. “It was buried near the bottom. The cat found it.”

  “What exactly is it?” asked Azalea. “I mean, besides black?”

  “An interlocking puzzle. You can see the seams between pieces. Also, if you look at the center, you’ll see the smoky outer shell is somewhat translucent and there is another tiny black heart in the middle of the big black heart.”

  “So the object is to remove the small heart?” asked Azalea.

  “Precisely.”

  Malik rubbed his fingers together and then clasped the rounded top on the right side of the heart. Pyewacket, who was perched on the lid of the trunk, purred.

  “There!” he said as the first piece slid out. “That has released this next piece.” Out came the V-shaped bottom. “Which unlocks this piece.”

  A dozen twists and turns later, Malik had taken the black stone heart completely apart and freed the tiny coal-black heart trapped at its core.

  “Well done, puzzle geek,” said Azalea playfully.

  “Why, thank you,” said Malik. “Hey, Zack, do you think your aunt Ginny would mind if I shared this with a friend, a fellow puzzle aficionado?”

  “You mean a fellow geek,” said Azalea.

  Zack shrugged. “Sure. Why not? I mean, she has so much junk in this trunk, I don’t think she’ll miss one puzzle.”

  The three friends continued laughing and digging through Aunt Ginny’s treasure chest.

  Which was why none of them heard the low rumble of thunder from somewhere not too far up the road.

  The dog that men called the Black Shuck had been sent to guard the Haddam Hill Cemetery, to protect the goodly souls buried there from the graveyard’s foulest residents.

  It perked up its ears, not liking what it heard.

  The click of a lock being opened.

  A spell being broken.

  The dog scurried around to the front of the Ickleby crypt.

  The black heart lock was still there, clamped tight through the hasp on the door.

  But the dog smelled something foul.

  The pent-up evil of thirteen villainous souls seeping out through the crypt’s mildewed stone walls.

  The seal had been shattered.

  T
he souls of the Icklebys had, somehow, been set free.

  Zack was having another very bad dream.

  He figured it was because he was sleeping in the basement on a flimsy foldout sofa bed with a metal bar digging into his spine.

  Or maybe because of the ice cream sundaes he and Aunt Ginny had whipped up in the kitchen after Malik and Azalea had gone home: Moose Tracks and peppermint ice cream topped with fudge sauce, raw cookie dough (squeezed straight from the tube), a gob of peanut butter, whipped cream, and maraschino cherries. Plus sprinkles.

  Yeah. That’d give a guy nightmares.

  In the dream, things kept turning into other things. First Zack and Zipper were floating downstream in a big and bouncy bra boat. They each had their own foamy bucket seat lined with frilly lace. But then the bra boat became a double-barrel slingshot, which Zack’s pal Davy, who popped in to say, “Howdy, pardner,” used to make trick shots behind his back, one of which took out a window on Main Street, which was when Grandpa Jim, in his sheriff’s uniform, showed up.

  “Zack?” said Grandpa Jim. “Are you awake, champ?”

  Zack pried open an eye.

  Grandpa Jim was sitting in the battered recliner where Azalea had sat earlier, a chair Zack’s dad had inherited when Grandpa Jim passed away.

  “Don’t worry, champ. I’ll be keeping an eye on things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Anything. Everything.”

  “What exactly are you talking about, Grandpa?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Because of the rules?” Grandpa Jim nodded.

  From the other ghosts he’d met, Zack had learned that there were very strict rules governing what ghosts could do or say to help people on the other side of the dirt, and since Grandpa Jim had been the top cop in North Chester when he was alive, he was all about playing by the rules.

  “Are you here to protect me from evil spirits?”

  Grandpa Jim gave Zack a worried smile that told Zack that, yep, that was exactly why he had popped in so close to Halloween.

  “That’s why your sisters are here, too,” said Zack. “All of them. Ginny, Sophie, and Hannah.”

  “I know.”

  “They’re upstairs if you want to say hello.”

  “Already did.”

  “Are you here to protect them, too?”

  “Those three don’t need me, Zack. Go back to sleep, champ. There’s nothing for you to do. Not tonight, anyway.”

  “Tomorrow’s Halloween. Is that when the trouble starts?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Because they won’t let you?”

  “Because I don’t know what tomorrow might bring. Nobody does.”

  “Okay. So what am I supposed to do?”

  “Same thing I told you to do that time I took you fishing up at Coulter’s Pond.”

  Coulter’s Pond was a lake where everybody said Battling Bob, this bigmouthed bass the size of a whale, lurked just below the surface, waiting to yank unsuspecting fishermen out of their boats.

  “Um, you told me to sit down because I was rocking the boat?”

  “And after that?”

  “You said I should hold on to my fishing rod real tight, just in case Battling Bob was itching for a fight.”

  “That’s right, Zack. Be ready and hang on tight.”

  And with that, Grandpa Jim Jennings disappeared into the cushions of his favorite chair.

  A half mile up the road, thirteen devilish souls swarmed together outside the buttressed stone walls of the Ickleby family crypt, savoring their newfound freedom.

  “The foul curse is finally broken!” proclaimed Barnabas.

  “Hang on, Pops,” said Eddie Boy Ickleby, the murdering thief who had died in 1979. His shaggy hair was cut into a mullet—short in the front and on the sides, long in the back. “The black heart lock is still clamped tight to the door, man.”

  “It was never the lock that held us prisoner,” said Barnabas. “It was something much stronger.” His mask—a jack-o’-lantern pattern cut into a coarse burlap sack—was cinched around his neck with a frayed rope as thick as any hangman’s noose.

  “What’re you bumping your gums about?” demanded the 1930s gangster ghost, Crazy Izzy Ickleby.

  “The sinister spell of the three detestable Jennings sisters,” said Barnabas. “They were the ones who sealed our souls inside this wretched tomb with their cursed incantations.”

  The spirits now circled around Barnabas were his direct descendants: Silas Ickleby, in his powdered wig; Webley Ickleby, the most notorious mass murderer of the 1820s; Pie-Eyes Ickleby, who had rushed to California in 1849, not to mine for gold but to steal it from those who did; Little Paulie Ickleby, who, with Mad Dog Murphy, had robbed banks during the 1950s.

  “Do you suppose those three sisters might lock us up once again?” This came from Hornus Ickleby, a scallywag who, like so many of these thirteen Icklebys, had met his death at the noosed end of a rope.

  “Rest easy, gentlemen,” hissed Barnabas. “We simply need to seize the black heart stone before the Jennings sisters reassemble it and repeat their abominable spell!”

  “Seize it?” snarled Cornelius Ickleby, an embezzler who, in the late 1800s, had devised clever Wall Street swindles. He was crouched near a fallen branch. “Look here—I cannot even seize this twig lying before me on the ground. My hands pass clean through it.”

  “You idle-headed, inky-fingered clerk,” sneered Barnabas. “As ghosts, we can do little. To thrive, we must find a living, breathing body!”

  “Say what, Old Scratch?” said Bad Bart Ickleby, a riverboat gambler who had died with five aces up his sleeve.

  “He’s right, man,” said Eddie Boy. “We gotta find us a new body.”

  “How we gonna do that, huh, huh?” demanded Crazy Izzy.

  Barnabas smirked beneath his mask. “Do not worry, children. A fresh body will come to us when the veil between our world and theirs is at its thinnest.”

  “And when exactly is that?”

  “Today!” croaked Barnabas. “Halloween.”

  Halloween fell on a Monday, so at two-thirty in the afternoon, Zack was still at school.

  “The same middle school where his father used to chat with the dead crossing guard,” said Ginny. “The same school where Zack recently ran into the ghost of Horace P. Pettimore.”

  “We must put an end to all this,” said Hannah. “Immediately.”

  “Oh, yes,” echoed Sophie. “We surely must. Right after supper.”

  Zack’s three great-aunts stood huddled around the cold barbecue grill on the deck. Zack’s dad was working at his office in New York City. Judy had gone to the mall to pick up some last-minute costume accessories for Zack and his friends.

  Only Zipper remained at home with the three sisters, and he was hunkered down inside his doghouse, keeping one eye on the three elderly women, the other on the three cats circling their ankles.

  Zipper didn’t like this.

  It was bad. Very, very, very bad.

  Three cats in the yard. His yard.

  A dog’s backyard was his castle.

  But now three cats were out on the deck, purring and stretching and sticking their fannies up in the air like they owned the place. Soon they’d be prancing down the steps to poop in the shrubs and pee under the trees. They would make Zipper’s castle smell cat nasty.

  This was a cat-tastrophe.

  One of the cats, Mister Cookiepants, a tabby who was sort of tubby, had already stolen several pieces of kibble from Zipper’s food bowl.

  Another, Pyewacket, swung around and swatted him on the snout when she didn’t like the way Zipper sniffed her heinie.

  The third one, Mystic, the black cat, had hissed at Zipper when he tried to steal her floppy fish toy. Mystic was bad luck and bad news.

  Zipper usually liked cats. But usually, they lived somewhere else and peed and pooped in a box or some other dog’s backyard.

  He wondered if Pyewacket, Mi
ster Cookiepants, and Mystic were moving in.

  Would there be crystal dinner bowls filled with globs of fishy gunk?

  Would he start coughing up hair balls?

  Would they make him join in the chorus when they started howling at the moon?

  Zipper sighed and sulked and sank his head between his paws.

  He needed a plan.

  Well, first he needed a nap.

  He yawned and stretched and drifted off into the most wonderful dream.

  It was marvelous. Better than a bacon cheeseburger wrapped in ham and served on a meat loaf bun.

  Zipper was chasing hundreds of cats up trees and telephone poles.

  And not a single one of them ever came back down!

  Ginny could tell: Her big sister Hannah was, once again, ready to tell her and Sophie what they needed to do.

  “There is only one sure way to protect Zachary,” Hannah decreed. “We must take him to the Hedge Pig Emporium. He must drink the milk shake.”

  “Oh, Hannah,” said Ginny. “Honestly. That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think? What if Zack does not wish to give up his gift?”

  “He is a boy, Virginia. He does not know what is best for him.”

  “And we do?” asked Ginny, arching an eyebrow.

  “Of course we do. We’re adults.”

  “Wisdom and age, dear sister, are not automatically linked.”

  The three cats meowed. They always did that when they heard something they agreed with.

  “Could we go with Zack and order milk shakes, too?” asked Sophie, who was working open the crinkly wrapper on one of the fun-sized candy bars she had snagged from the bags Judy kept stored in the pantry.

  Hannah glared at her.

  “I was just curious,” Sophie mumbled. “Actually, I prefer ice cream sodas. And Milky Ways.” She popped one into her mouth.

  “Might I remind you, sisters,” said Ginny, “that the milk shake will only prove effective should Zack truly desire to free himself from these uninvited visitors?”

  “It worked on his father,” countered Hannah.