Chris Grabenstein - The Black Heart Crypt

“Watch out!” Judy screamed.

Aunts Sophie and Hannah were just about to climb out of a taxi when the black stallion came charging around the bus.

Jack the Lantern had Azalea Torres in front of him on the saddle, so even though all the cops had their weapons trained on him, no one dared shoot at the moving target, for fear they’d accidentally hit the girl.

“Look at him!” shouted Stephen Snertz. “Hiding behind a girl! I told you—the guy’s a wuss!”

Suddenly, Jack pulled up on the reins and wheeled his snorting horse to the right. The stallion made a sharply angled turn, mirroring the move a knight makes in chess.

“Oh, crap!” screamed Stephen Snertz when he realized that the masked demon had an arm over Azalea’s shoulder. In his hand was a pistol aimed straight at the hardware-store clerk.

Snertz turned and made a mad dash for the door.

He almost made it, too.

But Jack the Lantern let loose with a cannon blast from his raised pistol.

The bullet smacked Snertz in the butt and sent him sailing forward through the hardware-store window. Glass shattered and Snertz landed with a belly flop on all the carved jack-o’-lanterns in the window display, many of which were already wilting after sitting in the sun so long. When the mounted maniac saw Snertz sprawled out in the rotting pumpkin patch, he started laughing insanely. All the police officers lowered their weapons an inch or two to marvel at his madness.

“Away, Satan! Fly like the wind!”

With a snick of his tongue and a click of his heels, Jack was once again racing away from the school bus and the hardware store.

“He’s heading for the clock tower!” someone shouted.

“Get the kids off the bus!” yelled the sheriff.

Azalea Torres was Jack’s only remaining hostage.

A pair of police officers dashed up the street after him while Sheriff Hargrove and his deputies secured the other children.

Jack leapt from his horse and yanked Azalea out of the saddle. With his modern-looking pistol aimed at her head, they backed toward the doorway of the clock tower.

“My son and Malik Sherman are in there!” Judy shouted to the police.

“Keep away, fools!” cried Jack the Lantern. “If any of you dare come in after me, this young lass dies!”

Judy watched as the demon pulled Azalea into the dark tower and slammed the door shut.

Now Jack the Lantern held three children hostage: Azalea, Malik, and Zack!

“Got it!”said Malik.

Zack pulled back from his peephole.

“He’s coming!”

“Who?”

“Jack the Lantern.”

“You mean Norman?”

“Yeah.”

From down below, they heard a heavy steel beam thudding into a bracket. The door was barred. The police wouldn’t be able to storm the tower and rescue them.

“He’s got Azalea,” said Zack.

“Move,” they heard a scratchy voice cry at the bottom of the spiral staircase.

“Let go of my arm already,” growled Azalea.

Zack, Malik, and Zipper knelt at the top of the spiral staircase, straining to hear every word echoing up from five stories below.

“Climb the stairs, missy. I need to parley with Mr. Jennings. He has something I desire.”

Zack heard the unmistakable sharp click of a pistol hammer being cocked.

“We’re up here!” he shouted down the steps. “And if you hurt Azalea, I’m going to toss this stupid stone down to my aunts, who just showed up and know what to do with it!”

“Zack?” Azalea shouted.

“Yeah?”

“Pumpkin Head put away his pistol.”

Good .

“My name is Jack the Lantern!”

“Fine. Whatever.”

Azalea never lost her cool. Zack just hoped she hadn’t lost that photographic memory she was always bragging about, either.

“We’re coming up,” Zack heard her say. “Let. Go. Of. My. Arm!”

Now all Zack heard was the heavy thunk-thunk-thunk of boot heels against steel stairs.

“It’s up to us,” he whispered to Malik. “We three must agree.”

“About what?”

“Smashing Barnabas Ickleby’s tiny black heart!”

“They’re onthe second floor,” said Malik, who was still perched at the top of the spiral staircase, counting boot clicks while Zack rummaged through Aunt Ginny’s bag.

“Okay. I think I’ve got everything we need.” He jammed the signal mirror and party horn into his back pockets. Wadded up the exorcism words into a paper ball. “Malik?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re gonna be our powder man.”

“Huh?”

Zack handed Malik a glass jar. “Extract of Newt Eye & Cow Hoof” was scribbled on its lid.

“Wait for your cue, then sidearm the whole jar at him.” Zack unscrewed the cap.

“The powder will fly out.”

“That’s the idea. Stand over there. Near those gears. Zip? You stick with me.”

The thunk of the boots became louder. Jack and Azalea were coming closer.

“Zack?” said Malik.

“Yeah?”

“What exactly are we doing here?”

Zack smiled and shot Malik a wink. “We’re about to become amateur herbologists.”

Azalea’s headbobbed up in the stairwell first.

Zack tossed her the paper wad.

She caught it. Gave him a puzzled look.

Zack did some rapid-fire hand signals he hoped she understood.

Azalea nodded. She quickly unfolded the sheet and read it.

Her eyes bugged out, but she took it all in. Half a second later, she crumpled the paper back up into a ball.

Now the man in the mask appeared.

“Greetings, Zachary.”

Zack just nodded.

“Where is it, boy?”

Now Zack held open his right hand. The miniature black heart from the center of the stone was nestled in his palm. “You mean this?”

“Give it to me!”

Zack retreated half a step. “No way.”

“What? You dare refuse me?”

Zack retreated another half step.

“I need that black heart.”

Zack took another backward step.

Jack the Lantern shoved Azalea aside. Held out his hand. “Give it to me, boy!”

Zack took one last giant step backward.

And was standing directly in the spot hit by the sunbeam streaming through the biggest broken-out hole in the clock face.

He whipped up the signal mirror with his free hand.

A blinding shaft of light streaked across the room and seared a rectangle of white over Jack the Lantern’s triangle eyeholes.

The masked man froze in his tracks.

“Azalea?” shouted Zack. “You’re on!”

“We threedeclare it so, the uninvited visitor must now go,” said Azalea with a shrug, because, Zack could tell, she had no idea why she had committed such nonsense to memory.

But she kept on going. “Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.”

Since they didn’t have a cat, Zack gave Zipper the hand command for “Speak.”

Zip howled.

Zack tucked the tiny black heart into his shirt pocket and motioned for Malik to move closer, for Azalea to take a step to her left.