Chris Grabenstein - The Black Heart Crypt

“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 dogthat 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.

The souls of the Icklebys had, somehow, been set free.

Zack washaving 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 halfmile 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.”