Chris Grabenstein - The Black Heart Crypt

THE HAUNTED MYSTERY SERIES BY CHRIS GRABENSTEIN

The Crossroads

Winner of the Agatha Award and the Anthony Award

The Hanging Hill

Winner of the Agatha Award

The Smoky Corridor

The Black Heart Crypt

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2011 by Chris Grabenstein

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Grabenstein, Chris.

The black heart crypt / Chris Grabenstein. — 1st ed.

p. cm. — (The haunted mystery series; bk. 4)

Summary: A 200-year-old ghost inhabits a living ancestor in order to take revenge on eleven-year-old Zack and his family.

eISBN: 978-0-375-89987-4

[1. Ghosts—Fiction. 2. Demonology—Fiction. 3. Revenge—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.G7487 Bl 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2011001939

Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

v3.1

for J. J. Myers,

who is the love of my life and,

hopefully, my afterlife

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Chapter 103

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Chapter 106

Chapter 107

Chapter 108

Chapter 109

Chapter 110

Chapter 111

Chapter 112

Chapter 113

Chapter 114

Chapter 115

Chapter 116

Chapter 117

Chapter 118

Chapter 119

Chapter 120

Chapter 121

Chapter 122

Chapter 123

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Zack Jenningsdid not want to chase a slobbering black dog with glowing red eyeballs up into the Haddam Hill Cemetery three nights before Halloween.

It was Zipper’s idea.

They were in the backyard after dinner, playing with a squishy yellow ball, when Zipper picked up the other dog’s scent and went tearing down the highway after it.

“Zipper? Halt! Stay! Come!”

Zack wasn’t exactly sure which command to use to stop his dog from chasing after the thundering black beast, which had to be some kind of hellhound; otherwise its eyes wouldn’t be a pair of red-hot coals.

But Zipper did not halt, stay, or come. The small dog slipped through the cemetery’s wrought-iron railings to pursue the monster, which had so many rippling muscles Zack figured it must belong to the Gym for Gigantic Dogs.

Of course he couldn’t squeeze between the railings like Zipper had, and he wasn’t much at scaling fences, especially when his glasses got all foggy, so he dashed around to the back of the cemetery, where he knew there was a gate because one night, back in June, he and his friend Davy had hidden in this very same cemetery to escape a knife-wielding nut job whose body was being controlled by an evil ancestor.

A dead evil ancestor.

Yep. Ghosts can do that. They can slip their souls into the bodies of family members and totally take them over.

Zack yanked open the gate and shuffled through the sea of leaves smothering the ground between tombstones. A chilly autumn nip was in the air. The moon was hidden behind a pile of angry dark clouds. The sky was a murky black. Three nights before Halloween, this cemetery was creepier than ever.

“Zipper?” Zack’s voice echoed off a marble monument. “Where are you, boy?”

Finally, his dog barked a quick volley of yaps to let Zack know he was extremely busy.

Then Zack heard a deep, throaty rumble. The demon dog!

“Hang on, Zip! I’m coming!”

Zack swung around a concrete angel and raced over to a tomb the size of a small cabin—the biggest, darkest mausoleum in the whole Haddam Hill Cemetery. Its arched wooden doorway was sealed tight with a black heart-shaped lock. Even in the gloom of night, Zack could read the name carved into the stone slab over the entryway:

ICKLEBY

“Zipper?” No answer.

Zack trotted around the stone building, which sort of looked like a miniature church made out of gray Lego blocks.

“Zipper?”

He heard a weird whimper that sounded like a weary sheep bleat.

“Zip?”

His dog came padding around the corner of the blockhouse with a bewildered grin on his snout.

“The big black dog disappeared on you, didn’t he, boy?”

Zipper wagged his tail excitedly, as if to say, Yeah, yeah. It was freaky .

Zack bent down to rub his buddy’s head.

“Well, maybe next time you’ll listen to me when I tell you not to chase after devil dogs.”

Zipper leapt up to lick Zack’s face. Zack laughed.

That is, he laughed until he heard the sharp slice of a shovel blade digging into dirt.

Someone elsewas in the cemetery.

Zipper hunkered down on the ground in pounce mode.

Zack pressed his back against the Ickleby family crypt in an attempt to disappear into the shadows.

Sticky cobwebs attacked the back of his head, making him feel like he’d just brushed up against a giant wad of cotton candy. Peeling away the gooey strands, Zack peered over at a cluster of grime-streaked headstones, where he saw a burly man with a bushy beard, who was dressed in coveralls, sinking his shovel blade into the ground, digging up rocky clumps of dirt. A softly glowing lantern propped atop a nearby headstone projected his hulking shadow up into the tangled tree branches, where it loomed like a floating ogre.