Chris Grabenstein - The Black Heart Crypt

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.

“Yes, dear?”

“When we accidentally opened the black heart stone, would that automatically make the lock on the Ickleby crypt pop open, too?”

“No, dear. The black heart stone functions on a different metaphysical plane than an actual lock.”

“Then somebody broke open the real one, because it was clamped shut the last time I was up here.”

Judy gasped. “Horse poop!”

“I beg your pardon?” said Aunt Hannah.

“The TV said Norman stole a horse.”

“Oh, my,” said Aunt Sophie.

“Zack’s right,” said Judy. “The dybbuk could still be here. We need to call the police.”

Just then, a ghost materialized—at the entrance to the Ickleby crypt!

Zack wasstanding closest to the ghost.

This one was wearing a three-piece striped suit, a necktie with hula girls painted on it, and an old-fashioned fedora. He looked like the mobsters in black-and-white movies. He also looked like he’d just lost a boxing match or something.

“Go ahead, you dirty rats,” the ghost groaned, doubled over with pain. “Call the coppers. See if I care! That grifter turned me into a stinking patsy.”

“Um, are you Crazy Izzy Ickleby?” Zack asked, remembering the name from the TV news.

“Yeah, kid. That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.”

“Crazy Izzy!” shouted Aunt Sophie. “That’s our Ickleby! The one we’re looking for!” She sparked the tip of a sage flare and tossed it at Crazy Izzy’s feet. “Hurry, girls! We’ve got him!”

“Wait,” coughed Izzy, who, thanks to the sage, couldn’t budge. “Cut me some slack, toots.…”

Aunt Sophie started chanting.

“It is time for you to leave here.”

Hannah and Ginny joined in.

“All is well. There is nothing here for you now.”

Crazy Izzy was starting to fade. “You ditzy dames. Why you doin’ this to me? I ain’t done nothin’ to youse!”

The three sisters chanted faster.

“Itistimeforyoutoleavehere. Alliswell. Thereisnothinghereforyounow.”

“I ain’t the one you want!”

Crazy Izzy vanished.

“Quick,” said Aunt Ginny. “Look for Norman Ickes. The dybbuk was foolish enough to exit his body. Hopefully, the real Norman is somewhere close by and is still in possession of the original black heart stone!”

“Mr. Ickes is most likely exhausted by his unwelcomed possession,” said Aunt Hannah. “He could be sleeping it off.”

“The crypt!” said Aunt Sophie. “He’s probably inside the crypt, taking a nap!”

“Hurry,” said Aunt Ginny. “If he still has the charm, we can lock them all away again!”

Zipper barked.

Zack bolted for the mausoleum doors.

Before he could grab the handles, another ghost materialized—right on the front step!

Zack yanked back his hand. His arm prickled with icy goose bumps as it passed through the specter’s materializing form.

This Ickleby ghost looked like a riverboat gambler.

“My goodness, Zachary, back again? You certainly are a bothersome brat, much like a booger we simply can’t thump off.”

“Where’s Norman Ickes?” said Zack.

“The hardware-store clerk?”

“Yeah. We need to talk to him.”

“Oh, Norman’s not talking to anyone tonight.”

“Why not?”

“Barnabas won’t let him.”

Barnabas Ickleby, disguised as Jack the Lantern, used Norman Ickes’s body to mark off ten paces from the door of the original Ickleby crypt to the center of the empty tomb.

“… eight, nine, ten.”

When he reached that spot, he turned to the south and marked off ten more. He turned once more and marched off five long strides.

Then he stopped and gazed down at the scuffed soil near the pointy tips of his riding boots.

“Is that where you hid your weapons?” asked Father Abercrombie, cowering under a cramped stone archway.

“Yes!” croaked Jack. “Before I died, I built this crypt and secretly hid my treasures! The gold, which you, good father, stole from me, and a fine arsenal of hand-tooled weapons!”

Jack dropped to his knees to claw at the dirt with his fingers.

“Guns will provide the quickest means for me to replenish the treasure you purloined. And what’s the sense of being alive if I am not rich, as well?”

Raking his hands across the hard-packed soil, he gouged out first a shallow hole and then a deeper trench.

“Huzzah!” he shouted when he uncovered his first glimpse of the strongbox’s rusty steel lid. “I am once more complete!”

“So whereexactly is Norman Ickes?” Zack asked the ghost of the riverboat gambler. “We need to find him.”

“He went for a horseback ride.” The gambler looked past Zack and sneered at the three great-aunts. “Good evening, ladies.”

“Where’s Norman?” Zack asked again, louder this time.

“Silly boy. Barnabas and the hardware-store clerk are long gone.”

“Wait a minute,” said Judy. “Crazy Izzy was the one inside Norman at the diner.”

“Yes, but that was before Barnabas decided it was his turn to pillage and plunder.”

Another Ickleby faded into view. This one was wearing a powdered wig and looked like the guys who signed the Declaration of Independence. “You simpering fools. Barnabas, my villainous grandfather, has absconded with the body you seek.”

“Barnabas was evil, too?” said Zack.

“Ha! He was the most evil of us all!”

Three more Icklebys, all from the 1800s, judging by their clothes and goofy sideburns, appeared outside the crypt.

“He longed to ride again!” said one.

“To terrorize the king’s highway as Jack the Lantern,” said another.

“Who’s Jack the Lantern?” asked Judy.

“The infamous child snatcher,” said the man in the Paul Revere wig. “The blackest sheep of our entire family! The one who showed us all the way, who set us on the path to perdition!”

“Why, if it weren’t for Barnabas,” said the riverboat gambler, “we all would have lived very boring lives.”

“Deaths, too!” added one of the guys with mutton-chop sideburns, which connected under his nose.

Now all nine of the lingering Ickleby souls were laughing outside the mausoleum bearing their name.

“Barnabas done took off,” wheezed a toothless gold miner in a beat-up ten-gallon hat. “And y’all ain’t never gonna catch him, neither! Come on, fellers, let’s vamoose before these three set in to tossin’ Injun sage sticks at us.”

All of a sudden, the nine gloating ghosts looked lost. Like kids in the mall who can’t find their parents.