The Black Heart Crypt (2 page)

“Well,” said Zack, wishing his throat weren’t so dry, “Zipper is very fast and …”

“Dogs ought to be named Fido, Duke, Sparky. What you two doin’ here, anyway? Cemetery’s closed.”

“Um,” said Zack, “Zipper chased a cat up the hill from the highway.”

“A cat?” The creepy gravedigger raised the lantern up beside his craggy face. “You sure it weren’t a dog? A big black dog?”

Zack gulped. “Pardon?”

The gravedigger bugged out his eyes. “A big black dog with fiery-red eyeballs. What some folks call a Black Shuck, a ghostly black beast what guards graveyards from foul spirits.” The man grinned menacingly. “Wonder why he let you two in.”

“It was just a cat,” said Zack.

The stray cat yowled again. With its strangled cry, it sounded like a baby screaming for its bottle.

“Well, we better get going.”

“Yep. You should. Ain’t very wise to be in a boneyard this close to Halloween unless, of course, you’ve got some serious business to attend to, such as digging a new grave.”

Zack was scared but also confused, so he said, “Huh?”

The gravedigger nodded toward the hole he’d been scooping out. “Mr. Henry H. Heckman has arrived just in time for Halloween, when he’ll crawl up out of the ground to go take care of whatever business he left undone when he died.”

“Heckman?”

“That’s what I said, boy. Putting him in the family plot. There’s all sorts of Heckmans buried up here on Haddam Hill.”

Yeah
, Zack wanted to say. He had met one of them back in June: a dead bus driver named Bud Heckman.

“Yep,” the gravedigger went on, “Heckmans have lived and died in these parts since before the Revolutionary War.”

“Just like the Icklebys, huh?”

The gravedigger lost his sly smile. “Icklebys ain’t from around here, boy.”

“Really? I saw their name on that big tomb over there, so I figured …”

“Icklebys don’t belong here and neither do you two! Git!”

Zipper snarled.

The gravedigger raised his shovel. “Git!”

“We’re ‘gitting,’ ” said Zack.

“Good! And don’t never come back here no more!”

“Don’t worry,” said Zack. “We won’t.”

Because a graveyard was the last place Zack Jennings wanted to be this close to Halloween.

Too many worm-eaten ghosts with pinochle cards up their snouts.

Thirteen demons
stared at the gravedigger through the cold stone walls of the Ickleby crypt.

“Let us out!” screamed the youngest soul trapped inside. “Let us out, you grody gravedigger, or I’ll ice you, man!”

His elders shook their heads. They knew that all the gravedigger would hear of the young man’s rant was the howl of a distant wind.

“Quiet, boy,” rasped Barnabas, the family patriarch and the oldest Ickleby entombed on Haddam Hill. “The gravedigger cannot hear you.”

“I don’t care, man. Someday, I’m gonna bust down these walls and break outta here!”

“Ah, you’re all wet, ya sap,” said the ghost of Crazy Izzy Ickleby, a gangster who had made his fortune running rum with Al Capone during Prohibition. “Besides, it ain’t the stones locking us in.”

“It is the spell,” said Barnabas. “The cursed spell!”

Barnabas, who had died in 1749 and, even as a ghost, still wore his bandit mask and tricornered hat, kept an eye on their unexpected visitor, the young boy in the glasses, as he disappeared down the hill with his dog.

“That child.” His voice was the husky croak of a strangled crow.

“What about him?” snapped the tough-talking gangster.

“When he leaned up against the wall, I felt a most peculiar chill. He is a Jennings.”

The twelve other demons hissed when he said the name.

The Icklebys hated the Jenningses.

They had hated them ever since the day thirty years ago when certain members of the Jennings clan had confined these thirteen Ickleby souls to this cramped crypt.

“We shall have our revenge on that boy,” said Barnabas. “And soon. Very soon.”

“They’re not
out there, George,” said Judy.

“You’re sure?”

Zack’s dad and stepmother were standing in the kitchen, looking out through the big bay window into the backyard.

“Come on,” said George. “Zack and Zip might be in trouble.”

“Or they might just be in the
front
yard,” said Judy.

“Halloween’s coming.”

“So?”

“The veil grows thin!”

Judy shook her head to clear out her ears. “What?”

“Halloween. The veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is thinnest on October thirty-first!”

Oh, boy
, thought Judy.

Ever since George had learned that Zack could see ghosts (the same way George had been able to when he was a boy), he had been spending a little too much time on
his daily commute to and from New York City reading books about the spirit world.

George grabbed a flashlight. He and Judy hurried out the back door.

“What’s that?” George swung his beam across the yard, pausing at a half-buried lump in the grass. “It looks like a head. A shrunken head!”

“That’s Zipper’s ball,” Judy said calmly.

“Are you sure? Maybe a ghost shrunk Zack’s head.”

“That’s not Zack, sweetheart. His head isn’t yellow and squishy.”

George tilted up his flashlight and moved the beacon across a flurry of swaying branches.

“There’s a ghost up there, waving at us! See him?”

“That’s a tree, hon.”

“You sure?”

“Ghosts don’t have that many limbs. Or bird nests.”

“But trees can have ghosts hidden inside them. Zack told me about the tree that crashed into the backyard, how the ghost trapped inside broke free and went on an all-out evil spree.”

Judy took George’s arm and cuddled up against him. “That ghost is all gone.”

“I know. But maybe he’ll come back.”

“I don’t think he can.”

“On Halloween, anything is possible. They all get a hall pass on Halloween.”

Judy smiled.

George kept on going. “Communicating with ancestors and departed loved ones is easiest near Halloween, the night when souls once again journey through this world on their way to the Summerlands, which is what ancient Druids called the afterlife.”

“George?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever think about going back to reading mysteries and military histories?”

“Why? Do you think I’m going overboard with this stuff?”

“Maybe. A little. Kind of.”

“I’m just trying to make sure Zack is safe. Halloween isn’t easy for a guy who sees ghosts, trust me.”

“Look, I’m sure if Zack sees anything paranormal, he’ll tell us.”

“I hope so. Maybe he should wear a disguise so the wandering spirits don’t wreak revenge on him.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. They’re dead. They’re not thinking straight.”

Judy heard leaves crunching.

“What’s that?” George swung his flashlight toward the forest.

And practically blinded his son.

“Hey, Dad. Hey, Mom.” Zack had to shield his eyes with his forearm. Zipper stood at his side, merrily wagging his tail.

“Are you two okay?” his father asked.

“Yeah. Zipper went chasing after a devil dog.”

“A what?” said Judy.

“A big black dog with glowing red eyeballs. He chased it all the way up to the Haddam Hill Cemetery.”

“Ah,” said his father. “A Black Shuck! They guard graveyards. I read about those.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?” asked Judy.

“Yeah. The dog-beast vanished.”

His father nodded knowingly. “They’ll do that.”

“But,” said Zack, “we might want to keep an eye out for Henry H. Heckman.”

“The baker on Main Street?” said George, who had grown up in North Chester and knew everybody in town.

“Yeah. He just died. The gravedigger figures he’ll be up and walking around on Monday night, seeing how it’s Halloween and all.” Zack yawned. “I’m pooped. Think I’ll head up to bed.”

“You still want to go pumpkin picking tomorrow?” his father asked, his brow wrinkled with concern.

“Yeah. And Malik and Azalea are really looking forward to it, too.”

“Great,” said Judy, smiling warmly. “Good night, hon. Don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

“I won’t. Come on, Zip.”

The two of them headed into the house.

“Okay,” said George, “that does it. We’re going to need reinforcements. I’m texting Aunt Ginny.”

Judy, who had only married George five months earlier, was still a little foggy about his family. “Which one is she?”

“Virginia. The youngest of my father’s three sisters. She helped me when I was Zack’s age and could see ghosts.”

“Really? How?”

“She made them go away.”

Near midnight,
a young woman, maybe twenty-four, scaled the cemetery fence and approached the Ickleby crypt.

“Hey,” said the youngest soul trapped inside, the one the others called Eddie Boy, the Ickleby who had been gunned down by the Massachusetts State Police during a convenience store robbery gone bad in 1979. “Who’s this chick? She is loo-king goooood!”

The girl had ringlets of wild blond hair curlicuing out from under the peak of her hooded cape. Her cloak was made of black velvet and lined with deep-purple silk. A pentagram pendant, a five-pointed sterling silver star, dangled on a chain around her neck.

“She,” said Barnabas, his voice a sinister squawk, “is one who can be of much use to us. Her name …”

He strained to suck thoughts from the young woman’s mind. Having been a ghost for over 260 years, Barnabas Ickleby had honed telepathic powers few other spirits possessed.

“… is Jenny Ballard, and, children, it seems she fancies herself a witch. She longs to fill her mind with evil thoughts. Miss Ballard should prove quite receptive to all my subconscious suggestions!”

The other twelve souls sniggered at the remark.

“I shall infest her mind with wickedness!” Barnabas gloated. “And then—I shall send her forth to seek out our new earthen vessel!”

Fast asleep
in his bedroom, Zack sure hoped he was dreaming.

If not, all sorts of dead people were dropping by to wish him a happy Halloween.

First to arrive was Rodman Willoughby, the dead chauffeur for the Spratlings, the family that used to be the richest one in all of North Chester because they owned the famous Spratling Clockworks Factory.