Chris Grabenstein - The Black Heart Crypt

“She isn’t like she used to be, champ. Dying changes a person. Makes them regret the mistakes they made when they were alive.”

“Have you seen her?”

“No. But, well, I’ve heard things. Susan Potter is working hard, trying to …”

Zack heard the distant rumble of thunder.

Grandpa Jim shook his head. “I swear, they have ears everywhere.”

“What? Who?”

“Nothin’. I said too much.” Grandpa Jim started to fade into his chair, the dog into the carpet. “Listen to what your mother told you, Zack. Right before she vanished. Listen good!”

The Black Shuck dog disappeared.

Grandpa Jim lingered for a moment longer, worry lines creasing his face.

Then he vanished, too.

No waycould Zack go right back to sleep.

So he climbed up the stairs and headed for the kitchen. Zipper padded after him.

They could both use a snack, maybe some milk that wasn’t chocolate, which was all they had in the basement fridge.

You should listen to what your mother told you .

Okay. That was a clue of some kind. The only hint Grandpa Jim could give (on account of the rules) without being sent to the big detention hall in the sky.

Zack gave Zipper a dog biscuit. Poured himself a glass of milk. When he sat down at the table to drink it and stare out the windows, Zipper hopped up into his lap, leaving the bone-shaped biscuit on the floor.

Zack figured his dog had seen enough bones for one night. He stroked the fur behind Zip’s ears and thought.

What had his mother said?

I’m different. I made mistakes .

Then she sort of sounded like she was begging for forgiveness.

Need … to … make … amends!

“Amends” had been on Zack’s vocabulary test the past week. That she had used that word meant she wanted to apologize by making up for her mistakes, compensating Zack for damages and injury.

Was that why she had also appeared at the Hanging Hill Playhouse over the summer?

To help him?

Maybe she’d stuffed her soul inside her sister’s body and come all the way to North Chester to make amends but she never got the chance because the three aunts sent her packing.

Was his real mother a different person, like Grandpa Jim had said, now that she was dead and could look back on all the bad things she had done when she was alive?

Zack stared out the kitchen windows. The backyard was dark. A single yellow bug light glowed over the deck. Some leaves swirled in a corner behind the cold barbecue grill, which was covered up and ready to hibernate for the winter.

Tink, tink, tink .

A black-beaked bird was tapping, gently rapping at the patio door.

“Haw!” the bird croaked. “Haw-haw-haw!”

Its black eyes glistened like oil.

Weird as it seemed, Zack thought he recognized the bird. Its laugh. Its cackle. It was the same raven that had been circling over the corn maze when he and Malik had gotten lost and bumped into the ghost of Mad Dog Murphy.

“Haw!”

“Grrrrr!”

Zipper jumped to the floor so he could snarl at the big black bird on the other side of the sliding glass door.

“Easy, Zip,” said Zack. “He’s outside. He can’t hurt us.”

When he said that, the bird lofted up off the deck, its massive wingspan blotting out the glow from the overhead porch light.

“Haw-haw-haw-haaaaw!”

Now the raven was laughing at Zack for thinking it couldn’t hurt him.

The nextmorning, before first light, Jack the Lantern was back in Satan’s saddle, his trusty guide bird perched on his bent arm.

“Take me to the boy!” he shouted as he tipped his elbow up to launch the raven.

The bird unfurled its wings and took flight, its midnight blackness nearly disappearing against the starry predawn sky.

The highwayman clicked his heels into his horse’s flanks and Satan trotted toward the gates of Spratling Manor. Jack the Lantern threw back his head and laughed.

It was November 2.

The day Zachary Jennings would die.

Zack wasstill in bed but already wide awake when Judy came down to the basement at seven a.m.

“I sent Mrs. Emerson an email last night, after you guys went to bed,” she said. “I asked her if she knew anything about this Jack the Lantern.”

“What’d she find out?”

“Seems he was a notorious highwayman.”

“Is that a toll collector or something?”

“No. A highwayman, back in olden days, was a thief who preyed on travelers. They’d attack stagecoaches or mail wagons. Some were like Robin Hood. They stole from the rich and gave to the poor.”

“And Jack the Lantern?”

“Very un–Robin Hoodish. He dressed all in black and always wore a terrifying burlap mask with holes to make him look like a jack-o’-lantern.”

“Is that how he got his name? Jack the Lantern?”

“Partially. He also used to toss firebombs in front of carriages to spook the horses so he could stop a coach, slay the driver, steal the passengers’ gold, and snatch baubles off the ladies.”

Judy hesitated.

Zack knew that whatever she said next wasn’t going to be good.

“Then he’d kidnap any children.”

Zack’s mouth went dry. “Why?”

“Well, if the families were wealthy, he’d ransom them back.”

“And if they weren’t so rich?”

“He’d sell the children as slave labor to factory owners and ship captains.”

“And nobody knew Jack was really Barnabas Ickleby?”

“Nope. He fooled everybody for nearly three hundred years.”

Suddenly, a horse whinnied out on the front lawn.

That was very bizarre.

Nobody in the neighborhood had a horse.

Aunt Ginnyhad woken up before anybody else in the house.

She knew that the most evil Ickleby of them all was now controlling the body of Norman Ickes and that Barnabas would soon come gunning for Zachary.

So Virginia Jennings, who had battled foul spirits and bullying demons all her life, would be prepared.

She quickly lit the jack-o’-lanterns lined up on the front porch railings, and then, very calmly, sat down in a rocking chair with another glowing pumpkin on her lap.

Moments later, the villain showed himself.

His glimmering black stallion pawed its hooves in the front lawn and snorted loudly. But it wouldn’t move closer.

Not as long as the jack-o’-lanterns are lit. It can’t. The illuminated gourds protect the house from all evil spirits, human or equine .

“Good morning, you wretched old woman!” shouted the rider with the hideously grinning face cut into his mask. “Where is the boy? Where is Zachary Jennings?”

A shiny black raven sat perched on the dark rider’s shoulder like a villainous parrot.

“Why are you so interested in Zack, Norman?”

“Why do you call me that inglorious name when you now know who I truly am?”

“You mean Barnabas the leech?”

“Leech?”

“That’s right. You’re nothing but a freeloading, life-sucking parasite. A dybbuk clinging on to your distant relative’s body because you’re too chicken to move on to your eternal reward or, in your case, eternal punishment!”