The Black Heart Crypt (19 page)

“Too bad!”

Ebony, now Satan, reared up on his hind legs and kicked at the air with his front hooves. The raven took flight. The masked rider raised his cocked hat high above his head.

“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 want 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.