Chris Grabenstein - The Black Heart Crypt

“Yes.”

“And those jerks from high school?”

“Yes! All who once caused you pain shall cower in fear before you.”

“And evil. Do I get to be evil? Because evil people have all the fun.”

“Yes.”

“Good. And will you be my girlfriend?”

“Forever and ever, Norman. You shall be the evil king. I shall be your wicked queen!”

Norman boldly stepped over the flickering candles to stand in the center of the pentagram. “Let’s do this thing!”

Jenny handed him a sheet of paper.

“The raven-throated voice spoke these words unto me. Recite them, Norman, and all will be as it should.”

He stared at the words. They seemed to be seared onto the page.

“Ancestors, hear me!” Norman’s voice grew stronger and steadier. “I praise you for the courage and cunning you showed while alive. Now, through the mists of time and the thinning veil of death, I invite you in. Take my body and use it as you see fit. Remove my cowardly soul and replace it with brazen hatred for all the weaklings of this world!”

He dropped the script. He didn’t need it anymore.

“I, Norman Ickleby, no longer have any desire to use this body for my own purposes. Take it. Take me. Take me now!”

At that instant, thunder clapped and a leaf-swirling wind blew out the circle of twelve candles.

The man who used to be Norman Ickes slumped to the ground, an empty vessel longing to be filled.

Barnabas andthe other ten remaining Ickleby souls surrounded the pentagram, each man standing where an unlit candle stood.

They stared down at the quivering body of their heir, Norman Ickleby.

They made the witchy woman feel an icy prickle of fear and foreboding up her spine.

“Let me enter the body!” demanded Cornelius, the notorious embezzler.

“Fie upon it,” cried Silas, who in 1789 had been executed for treason. “I have suffered in this interminable limbo far longer than he!”

“I want to live again!” whined Rilke, the mass-murdering scoundrel.

“Silence,” rasped Barnabas. “I have made my decision. Isador? Enter this newfound flesh.”

“Sure, sure,” said Crazy Izzy, the gangster from the 1930s. “I’ll give little Zack Jennings the big kiss-off. I’ll bump off his mutt, too!”

“Go! Steal Norman’s body! Use him to do all the things I command you to do!”

Crazy Izzy transmogrified into a throbbing ball of searing ultraviolet light.

“I get first dibs ’cause them Jennings bumped off my son and my grandson—Little Paulie and Eddie Boy. Right?”

“No,” said Barnabas, his eyes burning brightly inside the slits of his mask. “You are given this chance simply because you, like I, have no qualms about killing children.”

Crazy Izzy’s soul shot across the threshold between the living and the dead.

He took over the body of Norman Ickes.

“Did AuntGinny give you any clue as to what the heck’s going on?” Judy asked as she tucked Zack in for the night down in the rumpus room.

“Not really,” said Zack. “Just that the ghost downtown was an Ickleby and that Ginny and her sisters will take care of everything before they leave.”

Zipper, who was curled up near Zack’s knees, wagged his tail, happy to hear that the elderly aunts would be leaving. He hoped the cats would be leaving, too!

“But it sounds like the worst will be over by tomorrow morning,” Zack continued. “I think everybody has to be back in their coffins by sunrise.”

“Good,” said Judy. “Oh, I almost forgot.”

“What?”

“While you guys were downtown, your aunt Francine called.”

Zack sank about three inches under the covers. “Really?”

“She said she wanted to come see you.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“That this wasn’t a very good time.”

“Excellent! Thanks.”

“You and your dad never liked her, huh?”

“Nope. I think Aunt Francine hates me even more than my mother did. Blames me for killing her sister.”

“Which you didn’t do, Zack.”

“I know that. But, Judy?”

“Yeah?”

“Aunt Francine doesn’t. At the funeral, when nobody else was around, she said, ‘This is all your fault.’ ”

“That’s horrible.”

Zack shrugged. “By then, I was sort of used to it. Whenever Aunt Francine would visit, she and my mom would sit in the dining room and smoke cigarettes and tell each other what a rotten kid I was.”

“Zack, I am so sorry.…”

“Yeah. Me too.” Zack took in a deep, steadying breath. “But that was then and this is now. I just don’t want Aunt Francine bringing too much ‘then’ up here to mess with my great new ‘now.’ ”

“Tell you what,” said Judy. “If she calls again, I’ll just tell her there’s no room at the inn.” She leaned down and kissed Zack on his forehead. “I’ll deal with Aunt Francine. You stick to the ghosts.”

“Deal.”

“Sleep well, honey.”

“Will do.”

Zack pulled a sage candle out from under his pillow.

“What’s that?” asked Judy.

“My little friend,” said Zack, doing his killer bee accent. “Aunt Ginny gave it to me when she came down to tuck me in.”

“So you’ve been double-tucked?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. You deserve it.”

“Oh, shoot,” said Zack.

“What?”

“I meant to tell Aunt Ginny that Malik loaned her puzzle to a friend.”

“Huh?”

“We found this brainteaser in her trunk and Malik asked me if his friend could borrow it. I said yes. I was going to tell Aunt Ginny but things got so busy, first in the hardware store, then here, I just forgot!”

“You found this puzzle in her trunk? The trunk that seems to have exploded all over your bedroom?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t think Aunt Ginny will mind. Trust me—she still has plenty of other toys to play with.”

Zack smiled. “Okay. Thanks, Mom.”

“See you in the morning, hon.”

She flicked off the lights and shut the door.

Zack closed his eyes and, wiped out from the most exciting and most exhausting Halloween he could remember, started drifting off to sleep.

* * *

Around midnight, Zack heard Zipper panting.

Really loudly.

And the wet dribble of dog drool.

Actually, it couldn’t be Zipper. The panting was too heavy and Zipper seldom slobbered.

Zack opened an eye.

Grandpa Jim was sitting in his favorite chair again. This time, he had brought along the big black dog with the glowing red eyeballs.

“Rest up, Zack,” he said, patting the dog on its massive head. “Shuck and I will keep our eyes peeled for any trouble.”

“Is it coming?”

“Most likely. I have a feeling this thing will get worse before it gets any better.”

Jenny Ballardwatched Norman Ickes twitching on the ground, his kicking feet knocking down the dead candles.

“Norman?” She bent down to touch his cold and clammy forehead. “Norman?”

He wasn’t breathing.

“Ohmigod. Norman? Norman!”

An eye popped open.

Jenny put a hand over her racing heart.

“You scared me. I thought you were dead.”