The Black Heart Crypt (17 page)

“On the
morning of the funeral,” the priest continued, “when next I opened the doors to the mausoleum, all of the coffins had been rearranged!”

“Did somebody sneak in and do it as a prank?” asked Zack.

“Impossible. That door is six inches thick. The lock is made of iron. Only I have the key.”

The clergyman crept closer to the creepy crypt.

“I tried to ignore what I had seen, to construct a rational explanation. Perhaps there was metal in the coffins and a shift in the earth’s magnetic field had caused them to slide into their unusual configuration.”

Maybe there was an earthquake
, thought Zack.

“When the funeral service concluded and the pallbearers carried Edward’s coffin into the tomb, the caskets had moved once more! The one against the wall was upside down. Three had organized themselves into an ‘I’ formation. An ‘I’ for ‘Ickleby’!”

The priest stared at the crypt doors—as if he feared they’d suddenly swing open and swallow him whole.

“Months later, on Halloween, some children reported hearing voices inside the mausoleum. That night, horrible deeds were done.”

“By trick-or-treaters?” asked Zack.

“Trick-or-treating children do not burn down barns or slash the throats of innocent animals. They do not kill the one witness who survived Eddie Boy’s convenience store rampage and testified against him in court.”

“All this happened on Halloween night?” asked Judy.

“Yes. The following morning, I once again entered the Ickleby crypt.”

“Had the coffins been rearranged again?” asked Judy.

“All thirteen were upside down and resting on their lids.”

Zack’s eyes went wide as he imagined it.

“I didn’t know what to do,” said Father Abercrombie. “I could not harbor the spirits of demons here on sacred soil!”

And so you shipped them off to us
, thought Zack.
Nice
.

“With nowhere else to turn, I consulted a wise old woman who lived in a hovel deep in the woods. I had heard of her … reputation.”

Judy said it first: “Was she a witch?”

“Some would certainly call her that. Her name, as I recall, was Harriet, and she was quite familiar with the
Icklebys and their evil ways, for she claimed a swarm of Ickleby ghosts had, on that very same Halloween night, slain her favorite pet. A black cat she called Grizzmaldo.”

“When was this?” asked Judy.

“Thirty years ago. My wife—may she rest in peace—thought I had gone mad, prattling on about the ghosts of the evil Icklebys, the coffins in the crypt, decapitated cats, witchy women in the woods.…”

“How did this Harriet know it was Ickleby spirits who killed her cat?” Judy asked.

“She saw them. A crowd of twelve ghosts, one brandishing an axe. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘We be Icklebys,’ they replied. ‘This night belongs to us and all those who would do evil even after death!’ The one with the axe used it on her black cat.”

Zipper moaned. He wouldn’t wish that kind of cruelty on any creature, even ones with claws.

“I begged the wise woman of the woods to do something. Anything. This churchyard had to be cleansed of its foul spirits! She agreed. Said she wanted the cursed Ickleby corpses moved as far from their familiar haunts as possible. She told me she would contact certain cousins, three distant sisters who might be able to help us both.”

Zack looked at Judy. They both realized who Harriet’s three cousins had to be: Ginny, Sophie, and Hannah.

Now the priest stared down at Zack. “That week, all my prayers were answered. Your grandfather, Sheriff James Jennings—may God bless his soul—contacted me. He told
me he wasn’t sure why, but his sisters had insisted that he call to tell me about ‘the empty Spratling crypt.’ ”

“Spratling!” mused Zack.

“A wealthy family that lived in North Chester, the town where your grandfather was sheriff.”

“We know all about the Spratlings,” said Judy.

“Well, apparently, they had built a family crypt in the Haddam Hill Cemetery, which they never used because they built a second, much more elaborate mausoleum on the grounds of their estate.”

Zack and Judy (and probably even Zipper) could pretty much figure out what had happened next.

Grandpa Jim sent a truck and some men up to Great Barrington to empty the coffins out of the Massachusetts crypt so they could be transported forty miles south to Connecticut. The caskets were quietly loaded into the empty Spratling mausoleum in the cemetery. The heavy wooden doors were closed and locked. That was that.

“There was no service. No funeral rites,” the priest continued. “They simply removed the stone inscribed with the Spratling name and replaced it with a marble slab reading ‘Ickleby,’ or so I am told. I have never actually visited the Haddam Hill Cemetery.”

“That’s why it’s so white,” said Zack.

“Excuse me?”

“The Ickleby name above the door. It looks newer than all the other stones.”

“You’ve visited this mausoleum?”

Zack nodded.

“Do you know the Ickes family?” the priest asked Judy.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“They run the hardware store,” said Zack. “Ickes and Son. On Main Street. The son is a friend of Malik’s. They’re in a puzzle club or something.”

“They’re Icklebys!” said the priest. “Good ones, but I remember fearing for them when I first heard that they had moved to North Chester. You see, the father, Herman Ickleby, now calls himself Herman Ickes. He was Eddie Boy Ickleby’s brother. Herman was so ashamed of what his older brother had done that he took his pregnant wife and fled from Great Barrington. I never found the courage to tell him about the new location of the cursed Ickleby crypt. Poor Herman. He had wanted to move away from the earthly remains of his evil ancestors. Unfortunately, he ended up moving closer!”

Zack, Judy
, and Zipper said goodbye to the fidgety priest, who hurried off to the rectory, the dilapidated house where he lived all by himself, and locked the door.

“So now we know how the Icklebys got down to North Chester,” said Zack as they hiked up the hill to Judy’s car.

“And I think all those evil Icklebys didn’t want to make the move,” said Judy. “They knew their way around Great Barrington. Knew where to find their enemies and how to terrorize them.”

“So you think they’re still mad at Dad’s aunts for shipping their coffins down to North Chester?”

Judy nodded. “They only started popping up after the three sisters came to visit us.”

“Guess they’re mad at us now, too,” said Zack, remembering the ghost who’d tried to kung fu him in the hardware store and the one who’d tried to slash Judy on the front porch with his switchblade knife.

“Well,” said Judy, “we are Jenningses.”

“Yeah,” said Zack. “So do you want to change your name back to Judy Magruder?”

She laughed. “No thanks. Being a Jennings is much more exciting.”

The stable
owner, a doll all decked out in riding pants and one of them velvety chin-strap helmets, walked the big black stallion into a horse trailer hooked up to the rear bumper of a heavy-duty pickup truck.

She’d already tossed in a saddle and a bunch of what they called tack.

“You certainly know how to pick a horse, Mr. Ickes,” she said to Norman, who was really Crazy Izzy Ickleby. “Ebony’s bloodlines go all the way back to the first Arabian stallion brought to this continent in 1723.”

The purebred horse’s tail plume swished back and forth proudly as Miss Horseypants patted his glossy flanks.

“Look, doll, it’s getting dark. Whattaya say we quit flappin’ our gums and go into the barn there and settle up?”

“It’s a paddock, sir, not a barn.”

“Tomato, tomahto.” Izzy reached into Norman’s pocket and pulled out the wad of cash he had pinched from the hardware store.

“You intend to pay for Ebony with cash?”

“What, my lettuce is no good?”

“Well, I’m just surprised you would carry so much money on your person.”

“Sure, sure. I’m lousy with dough.”

“Very well. I’ll write up the papers.”

“Swell.”

“After, of course, you give me the five hundred thousand dollars.”

They closed up the horse carrier and went back into the small office at the front of the stables.

“I don’t mean to be rude, sir, but might I see the rest of your cash?”

“Sure, sure.”

Izzy reached down into his coat pocket. The one with the pistol packed in it. He whipped the weapon up and bashed the lady hard on the head with the butt of it.

The dizzy dame crumpled to the floor. She was out cold.

“Ooh, that was incredible,”
said Norman’s voice inside Izzy’s head.
“I never knocked anybody out before. I never even punched a person.”

“Stick around, kid. I’m just gettin’ started.”

Izzy dragged the unconscious dame into Ebony’s empty stall, tied her up to a hitching post with a bunch of leather bridles, stuffed a wad of hay into her kisser, and gagged her tight with a cowboy-style kerchief he found hanging on a hook.

“That ought to hold her,” he said when he finished binding and gagging the stable owner.

“Now can we please go kill Stephen Snertz?”
Norman’s voice begged inside Izzy’s head.

A black raven swooped into the stables and landed on the top rail of a stall.

“Haw!” it croaked.

Izzy got the picture.

“Sorry, Norm. No can do. Snertz will have to wait. Seems Barnabas wants to go on a pony ride.”

Izzy Ickleby
used to drive beer trucks for the mob in Chicago.

So piloting the pickup hauling the horse trailer down the highway was no big whoop.

He was only a mile or two away from the Haddam Hill Cemetery when he felt something he hadn’t felt in seventy years.

He was hungry. Starving!

It was nearly six o’clock and he hadn’t eaten anything all day. His headlights hit a sign: The Hi-Way 31 Eat and Run. He gave the hash house a quick up and down. The blinking sign in the window said they served hot apple pie.

Izzy slammed on the brakes, squealed wheels, and pulled his rig into the parking lot.

“Wait out here,” he said to the black stallion. “I’m gonna go inside and grab a quick slice of pie and a cup of joe.”

Izzy entered the diner. Savored the smell of greasy
burgers and greasier potatoes. Fresh java was brewing. A waitress waltzed past carrying a slab of pie buried under a scoop of ice cream the size of a softball. The sweet scents of cinnamon, brown sugar, and pure vanilla swirled up to dance a rumba inside his schnozzle.

Crazy Izzy sighed.

Maybe he’d finally made it to heaven.

He sat at the counter and whistled for a waiter.

“What’ll you have?”

“Apple pie all the way. And keep it coming, Mac.”

Izzy finished his eleventh slice of apple pie à la mode.

Most of the ice cream had melted into a shallow white lake. So he raised the pie plate to his lips and sucked the sweet, sticky gunk down his gullet.

“You finished?” asked the counterman.

“Bring me another wedge of pie.”

“There’s none left. You ate it all. You want anything else?”