The Black Heart Crypt

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Farewell, foolish children! Jack the Lantern rides again!”

  Zack and Judy reached the crossroads of Highway 31 and State Route 13.

  To the west, they saw the swirling reflection of red police lights.

  “You think the ghost horse ran somebody off the road?” asked Zack.

  “I guess it’s possible. We don’t really know all the rules for ghost animals, do we?”

  “Not really. There was that crazed cat at the Hanging Hill Playhouse. But it was more like a zombie than a ghost.”

  They made their way to the Rocky Hill Farms subdivision and cruised up Stonebriar Road to the lip of their driveway.

  “Uh-oh,” Judy said as glanced up at the house. “More trouble.”

  “Yeah,” said Zack, because he saw it, too: a frantic shadow-puppet show playing on the living room curtains. A tall woman being chased by three short ones. Several cats flying through the air. Lamps and vases falling willy-nilly.

  “Come on,” said Judy.

  They ran to the house.

  The front door flew open.

  A tall woman in a business suit stumbled out backward. She was kind of wobbly on her legs, like her high-heel shoes didn’t fit.

  “I need to see Zachary!”

  Uh-oh, Zack thought. The voice sounded familiar.

  The tall woman whipped around.

  Double uh-oh. It was Aunt Francine.

  His dead mother’s sister!

  “There you are!” said Aunt Francine, her eyes swimming in crazy circles. “Zachary!”

  She reached out both arms—Frankenstein-style—and stumbled forward.

  “Stand back!” shouted Aunt Ginny as the three Jennings sisters came toddling onto the porch, each one holding a white sage stick. Their three cats streamed out behind them and circled Aunt Francine, who was still staring down at Zack.

  Zack took one step backward.

  “Where were you?” Aunt Francine demanded.

  “We went for a ride,” said Judy, stepping in front of Zack to shield him.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Judy.”

  Zack didn’t like the way Aunt Francine sounded, because frankly, she sounded just like his dead mother!

  “Do I know you?” asked Judy.

  Aunt Francine’s lips twitched up into the most hideous smile Zack had ever seen. “We’ve never been formally introduced, but I know all about you.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” cried Aunt Hannah. “That is the dybbuk speaking.”

  “The what?” said Judy.

  “The dybbuk,” Aunt Hannah repeated, pronouncing the word “dih-buk.”

  “That’s my aunt Francine,” Zack finally blurted. “My real mother’s sister.”

  “That’s right, Zachary,” said Francine. “Your real mother!”

  The three sisters circled her on the porch.

  “In Jewish folklore,” said Aunt Hannah, remaining incredibly calm, “a dybbuk is the malicious disembodied soul of a dead sinner that has attached itself to the body of a living relative.”

  “Therefore,” said Aunt Ginny, “this woman who appears to be Zack’s aunt is currently possessed by the soul of someone dead.”

  “Are you sure about all this?” asked Judy.

  “Oh, yes, dearie,” said Aunt Ginny. “Quite.”

  “I had to come back,” said the dybbuk. “I did not fulfill my mission in life!”

  Aunt Hannah reached into a pouch tied to her belt. “Hear that? Pure dybbuk talk.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Aunt Sophie. “They always say that. Blah-blah-blah ‘mission in life.’ ”

  “Leave me alone!” hollered Aunt Francine. “All of you! I only came back to take care of Zack the way I should have taken care of him when I was alive!”

  Zack’s jaw fell open.

  He knew exactly whose spirit had taken over Aunt Francine’s body.

  Susan Potter Jennings’s.

  His dead mother.

  Sheriff Ben Hargrove of the North Chester Police Department stood outside the Ickleby crypt on Haddam Hill with a cluster of Connecticut State Police officers.

  They were all staring at an empty horse trailer hitched to a pickup truck.

  “I can’t believe Norman Ickes would do such a thing,” said the sheriff, shaking his head.

  “Would you like to look at the freeze-frame from the diner’s security camera again?” said the state police detective.

  “No need,” said Hargrove. “I just never pegged Norman to be a violent criminal, waving a gun around like that.”

  “This the same cemetery where you found the dead girl on Halloween?”

  “Yeah,” said Hargrove. “You think there’s a connection?”

  “I’m starting to. This kid, Norman—they sell hunting knives at his hardware store?”

  Hargrove nodded. “Herman Ickes, Norman’s father, reported one missing last night.”

  “We’ll add it to the list of charges when we nab this guy, which should be soon.” The detective gestured toward the empty trailer. “Especially if he’s on horseback. Cammie?”

  “Yeah, boss?”

  “Impound this vehicle and trailer. Haul them over to the crime lab.”

  “On it.”

  While the trooper named Cammie radioed for a tow truck, another pair of state police officers came hiking out of the woods.

  “Boss?” one of them called out to the lead detective.

  “What’ve you got, MacDonald?”

  “This kid Ickes is good.”

  “How so?”

  “We tracked the horse hooves down to a creek.”

  “Don’t tell me: He took the horse into the water?”

  “Exactly. We don’t know which way he went. Plus, to the south, the creek splits. So …”

  “Put out an all-points bulletin. I want this Norman’s photograph on the eleven o’clock news. I want his description—and the horse’s—on the radio. I want every law-abiding citizen in the state of Connecticut looking for Norman Ickes, the Hardware Clerk Crook!”

  The three aunts tightened their circle around Aunt Francine.

  The cats circling the aunts’ ankles hissed, their tiny mouths opening wide to expose needle-sharp fangs.

  “Show the dybbuk its false reflection,” said Hannah.

  The three sisters slowly brought silvery signal mirrors, the kind hikers pack in survival kits, up to their eyes. Zack could see Aunt Francine’s face flickering in their flat and shiny surfaces.

  She suddenly looked totally paralyzed.

  Zack moved closer to Judy.

  “She wants to hurt me,” he whispered.

  “Not to worry, Zack, dear,” Aunt Ginny declared from the porch. “This dybbuk shall soon depart.”

  Aunt Sophie tossed a glittering handful of sparkling powder over Aunt Francine’s head.

  “Now, if we were ghosts more powerful than the spirit currently possessing the body,” explained Aunt Ginny, “we could simply shove the weaker soul out and replace it with one of our own.”

  “But since we’re all alive,” said Aunt Sophie, “we must perform an exorcism.”

  Exorcism? Zack gulped. He had seen that movie on DVD.

  “Typically,” decreed Aunt Hannah, “this rite is performed by a rabbi and a cohort of ten.”

  “However,” said Aunt Ginny, “we three have streamlined the ceremony to its essence.”

  “You must have three,” said Aunt Hannah.

  “Oh, yes,” added Aunt Sophie. “Three is the absolute, bare minimum.”

  Pyewacket, Mister Cookiepants, and Mystic yowled.

  “It is time to begin!” said Aunt Hannah.

  Aunt Ginny cleared her throat and started to chant: “We three declare it so, the uninvited visitor must now go!”

  “Stop!” shrieked the dybbuk. “You stop that this instant!”

  Aunt Francine remained frozen in the center of the circle, her arms stubbornly stiff. She couldn’t claw but she sure could shriek.

  “I wan
t Zack! Stop this foolishness immediately!”

  His three great-aunts would not listen to her pleas. They reached out for each other’s hands and, swaying slightly side to side, continued their eerie incantation:

  “Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d!”

  The black cat in the pack howled loudly.

  Zack and Judy stood mesmerized, watching the three women fearlessly circling the snarling demon.

  “Round the dybbuk now we go;

  Leave this body by the toe.

  Spirit, under cold stone lie;

  You have had your chance to die.”

  Aunt Sophie tossed more sparkling powder up into the air.

  “Eye of newt and hoof of cow,

  Leave this body, leave it now!”

  Now Aunt Ginny pulled out a tin party horn, the kind people blow on New Year’s Eve.

  “In the traditional dybbuk exorcism ritual,” she said over her shoulder, “the rabbi would now blow certain strident notes on the shofar, a ram’s horn used in Jewish religious ceremonies, to shake loose the soul possessing the body.”

  “We, however,” said Hannah, “have found that any jarring horn will suffice.”

  “The more sour the notes, the better,” added Sophie. “Virginia?”

  Aunt Ginny brought the party horn up to her lips and blew a jangled jumble of clashing trumpet honks that sounded like monkey squeals and donkey bleats.

  Aunt Francine started to quiver.

  And shimmy.

  Her body slumped to the floor.

  A purple mist seeped up out of her crumpled form.

  The violet cloud quickly took shape.

  Zack’s dead mother, her head bald, her body swallowed up by a hospital gown, her eyes nearly popping out of her skull, stood on the porch, staring down at him.

  Zack wasn’t sure, but it looked like she might be crying.

  Her son had grown so much.

  “Zachary?” She tried to smile. It wasn’t easy. She hadn’t done much smiling when she was alive, something she sorely regretted now that she was dead.

  “Why did you possess your sister?” asked the woman she recognized as George’s aunt Hannah.

  “To reach Zack.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m his mother. I know things other spirits cannot!”

  “Such as?”

  “Grave dangers lie ahead.”

  “Very well,” said Hannah. “Zachary has heard your warning. You may now depart.”

  Aunt Hannah and her two sisters lit some sort of white torches.

  Sage!

  Susan Potter froze. She couldn’t budge. Could barely speak.

  “No … the … Icklebys,” she said, choking.

  “Zack knows of the Icklebys,” said George’s aunt Hannah. “You may now depart.”

  “Zack?” she pleaded. “I’m … different. I … made … mistakes. Need … to … make … amends!”

  Her son hid behind the woman who had taken her place. The stepmother.

  “It is time for you to leave here, Susan Potter,” George’s three aunts chanted. “All is well. There is nothing here for you now.”

  “Zack …”

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

  “Wait. Zack? Nine-fifty-two.”

  Thunder cracked. She wasn’t allowed to tell him that. It was against the rules.

  “Nine-fifty-two!”

  Another explosion of heavenly anger. She didn’t care.

  The stench of the burning sage grew stronger. She could feel herself starting to slip away.

  “It is time for you to leave,” the aunts chanted again. “All is well. There is nothing here for you now.”

  “No. Please.”

  “Go!” she heard Zack shout. “You heard them: There is nothing here for you. Nothing at all! Go and never come back!”

  “Zack?” she railed against the coming darkness. “I’m sorry! Nine-fifty-two!”

  She had no way of knowing if Zack heard her.

  She was alone in the blackness again, doomed to drift once more in the bottomless abyss of her own creation.

  Because in death there was no way for Susan Potter Jennings to make right all that in life she had done wrong.

  The raven proved an excellent guide, leading horse and rider through the shallows of the Pattakonck River until they came upon a dilapidated boathouse.

  Water lapped at the piers of its rotted dock. Barnabas tugged the reins and urged Satan to climb the muddy banks of the river. The hoofprints were the first they had made in miles.

  The police searching for Norman Ickes would not be able to track Jack the Lantern.

  “Thank you, trusted eyes of the sky,” Barnabas said to the bird as it lighted upon his elevated arm. “We need now a stable. Somewhere for Satan to rest this night.”

  The bird fluttered off its perch and flew up a weed-choked pathway to a dark, deserted mansion. Barnabas snicked his tongue and Satan clip-clopped up the trail of flagstones, following where the bird led.

  They soon passed a domed mausoleum penned in by a spike-tipped picket fence. The burial chamber had to be three or four times larger than the Ickleby family crypt.

  A name was chiseled above its grand entrance:

  SPRATLING

  Of course. The dark mansion up ahead was the fabled Spratling Manor, with an estate so vast it had its own monumental burial vault.

  Barnabas had heard of this place back when his casket and soul were first wrenched away from the cemetery at Saint Barnabas. A young gravedigger had joked that the Spratlings were “too good” to be buried in Haddam Hill Cemetery with the commoners.

  The raven cawed from the peak of a slate roof on an outbuilding.

  “A carriage house,” murmured Barnabas.

  Two wide doors separated by a stone pillar filled the front of the building. Barnabas and his horse trotted closer. Through the narrow glass windows at the top of the roll-up doors, he could see that one stall was occupied by a hulking black Cadillac the size of a boat. The other was empty.

  He dismounted his steed.

  “You will rest and feed here tonight while I journey north. To Great Barrington.”

  After removing Satan’s bridle and saddle and feeding him a sack of dry oats he found rotting in the mansion’s pantry, Barnabas explored the cluttered shelves of the garage.

  He found exactly what he was looking for: two kerosene lanterns and a box of wooden matches.

  Next he marched back into the manor itself. The place was deserted. Rodents scurrying along the baseboards seemed to be the only living inhabitants.

  Passing through a gallery of dark oil portraits, he ascended a staircase to the second floor and started rummaging through closets and storage trunks. The place reeked of mildew and attic dust.

  Fortunately, the Spratling men had been old-fashioned when it came to clothing. Barnabas was able to quickly piece together an all-black costume very similar to that worn by his alter ego back in the early 1700s: black riding pantaloons, tasseled Hessian boots, a long black tailcoat, a flowing black cape.

  “Forget the cape,” said a small voice inside his head.

  Barnabas grinned. Norman.

  “Why?” he thought back.

  “It’ll just slow us down.”

  Us. The thought made Barnabas widen the grin beneath his mask.

  “Very well,” he said out loud. “I thank you, Norman, for your wise advice and counsel. Now—be still!”

  In another closet, Barnabas found a silk top hat. He did not take it.

  The black tricorne—stained and weather-beaten, its stiff fabric cracked along the edges—looked much more menacing.

  Norman’s voice in his head made no objection to his choice of hat.

  So Barnabas tugged it on and tucked the pistol his descendant had stolen from the hardware store into his wide leather belt. The modern-day weapon would suffice until Jack the Lantern was reunited with his hidden gold and his own cache of single-shot pistols. He pre
ferred to kill with those. The spark of flint. The roar of the gunpowder. The smoky sizzle of the swirling lead ball ripping through flesh and bone.

  It was like shooting a man with a small cannon.

  Passing a misty wall mirror, Barnabas gazed upon his gloriously attired reflection. The body of Norman Ickes was slight, but the rippling black garments and sinister jack-o’-lantern mask made him look powerful, especially amidst the gloomy darkness. Pleased with what he saw, Barnabas threw back his head and let loose the lunatic war cry of a madman.

  Jack the Lantern was back.

  Randy Lawson was driving home on State Route 13.

  It had been a long day. Sales calls in Waterbury and Danbury. Dinner with a client. Now he was traveling the empty backcountry roads through Connecticut to Massachusetts.

  He had just passed the imposing iron gates leading into somebody’s grand estate when a massive fireball, like a tanker truck exploding, erupted in the middle of the highway.

  He stomped on the brakes.

  His car came to a tire-screeching stop ten feet in front of the roiling inferno as it belched out thick clouds of curling black smoke. Someone had tossed two kerosene lanterns onto the asphalt!

  Fortunately, Randy Lawson wasn’t hurt. The seat belt had done its job. The air bags had not deployed.

  But now his heart started racing even faster.

  A masked man, dressed all in black, who looked like a walking jack-o’-lantern in a three-cornered hat, came striding out of the thicket at the side of the road.

  He carried a pistol.

  “Take me to Saint Barnabas church in Great Barrington,” croaked the masked man. “Or die!”

  All of Zack’s aunts—the great and, Francine, the not-so-great—were gathered in the kitchen.

  Judy turned on the small TV in the breakfast nook to check out the eleven o’clock local news. “I wonder if they’ll have anything about whatever was going on up at the graveyard.”

  Aunt Ginny arched an eyebrow. “The Haddam Hill Cemetery?”