The Black Heart Crypt (4 page)

Georgie even had a son of his own, a boy named
Zachary, whom the aunts had not spent much time with, because his mother, a rather dour woman named Susan, had made it frightfully clear that her husband’s aged aunts were not welcome in the young family’s swanky New York City apartment.

The three sisters had, however, returned to New York after Susan’s untimely death and, more happily, eighteen months later, for George’s second wedding, when he married the lovely and talented Judy Magruder.

Ginny pulled a sleek cell phone out of her purse, swiped her fingers across its glass face, turning it on, and set it down on the table.

A faint smile creased Hannah’s sour lips. “So, tell us, Virginia: How is Georgie?”

“How’s Zack?” asked Sophie, her eyes sparkling like sugared plums. “And Judy? I liked Judy.”

“They’re all fine,” said Ginny.

Suddenly, her cell phone started vibrating.

“Oh, my!” gasped Sophie, fanning her hands, making her upper arms jiggle. “It’s alive!”

“No, Sophie,” said Ginny. “That simply means I have received a new text message.”

She glanced at the screen.

“Oh, dear. I should have turned my phone on earlier! We must fly home to North Chester. Immediately. Georgie needs us!”

“Fly home,
Virginia?” said Hannah. “Whatever is the problem?”

“It’s Zachary,” said Ginny, quickly looking around to make certain no one was eavesdropping. “Georgie’s son has—
the gift.
”

“Oh, dear,” said Hannah.

“Oh me, oh my,” added Sophie, nervously nibbling the sprinkled edge of her second Pop-Tart.

Ginny was about to give them more details when the boorish nephew returned with a sloppy bowl of mush, which he slammed down so hard in front of his wheelchair-bound uncle, chunky gray clumps leapt up and splattered his bathrobe.

“Hah! Look at you, sitting in your high chair, food all over your face. No wonder you need diapers! You’re a big baby!”

Ginny had seen enough.

She placed her banana peel on the table and plucked the plastic straw out of her water glass.

“Sisters?” she said, angrily arching an eyebrow.

“We three agree,” said Hannah and Sophie.

Ginny held up the straw as if it were a conductor’s baton she meant to fling at the oafish young man.

But she didn’t.

Because at that very instant, the baboon seemed to slip on something very slick, very wet.

Why, it was almost as if he had stepped on a banana peel.

He lost his footing and, arms whirling, fell into the swimming pool.

Ginny smiled.

So did her two sisters.

So did Uncle Gus in the wheelchair.

“I believe our work here is done,” said Ginny, plopping the plastic straw back into her water glass. “Shall we go upstairs and pack?”

“Oh, yes,” said Sophie.

“Indeed,” added Hannah.

The three sisters walked over to the elderly man left stranded in his wheelchair.

“Would you like us to take you up to your room, Augustus?” offered Hannah.

“Thank you. How very kind of you.”

Then the three Jennings sisters, with Hannah piloting the wheelchair, left the poolside patio, ignoring the frantic pleas of the young brute flailing about in the water so violently, he would probably slosh it all out before he remembered he knew how to swim.

Early Saturday
, two days before Halloween, Zack; his stepmom, Judy; and his two best friends from school, Malik Sherman and Azalea Torres, piled into Judy’s car and headed out to pick pumpkins at Paproski’s Pumpkin Patch, a farm a few miles south of North Chester.

They took Zipper, too, because pumpkin picking was an outdoor activity. But Zack would need to make sure that Zip didn’t pee on somebody else’s just-picked pumpkin.

Zack’s father would’ve joined them for pumpkin picking, but even though it was Saturday, he was extremely busy managing the affairs of the Pettimore Charitable Trust, which, thanks to Zack and Malik, had just inherited a ton of gold. Literally. The boys had found more than two thousand pounds of solid gold bars hidden underneath their middle school.

Malik and a school janitor named Wade Muggins, who kind of sort of accidentally helped discover the gold, were supposed to receive big rewards. Malik would use his share to help his mother pay her colossal medical bills. Mr.
Muggins would probably use his to buy an electric guitar and several cowbells.

“Here we go, guys,” said Judy as the car bumped down a gravel road toward the field where pumpkin pickers parked. Zack could see acres of wilted greenery spotted with bright orange balls. Hay bales, some with comical scarecrows squatting on top, lined paths to wagon rides, an apple cider stand, and a corn maze—what Paproski’s Pumpkin Patch called the Amazing Haunted Maize Maze.

“Did you know that the tradition of carving gourds into lanterns dates back thousands of years to Africa?” said Malik, who was African American and quite proud of his heritage. He was also the smartest kid in Zack’s sixth-grade class.

“So why do they call them Jack O’Lanterns?” asked Azalea, who had stopped doing her total Goth look but had maintained much of her Goth ’tude. “Were Jack and the beanstalk from Africa, too?”

“Doubtful,” said Malik. “The term ‘jack-o’-lantern’ comes from the phenomenon of strange lights flickering over the Irish peat bogs, called ignis fatuus or jack-o’-lantem.”

“Irish, huh?” said Azalea. “No wonder his last name is O’Lantern.”

“Indeed,” said Malik, who sometimes talked like a walking Wikipedia. “Throughout Ireland and Britain, there is a long tradition of carving lanterns from vegetables. Particularly the turnip and mangel-wurzel.”

Behind the wheel, Judy laughed. “The mangel-what?”

“The mangel-wurzel,” said Malik. “It is a little-known root vegetable hailing from the same family as beets.”

“You mean the yucky family?” said Azalea, scrunching up her nose. “I hate beets!”

“Me too,” said Judy. “They smell like dirt.”

“Exactly!” said Azalea.

Zack, who was riding up front in the passenger seat, smiled. It was so cool to have a carful of friends, not to mention one totally awesome stepmother. It sort of made up for the first nine years of his life, when he had no friends and a mother who never smiled.

“I heard this legend about a guy named Stingy Jack,” said Zack, turning around in his seat.

“Aw, you’re not that stingy, Zack,” said Azalea, winking at Malik, who chuckled.

“
Jack
, not Zack!”

“Whatever.”

“When Stingy Jack died, the devil couldn’t take his soul, on account of some trick Jack played on the devil when he was still alive. And God wouldn’t let Stingy Jack into heaven, either, because Jack had hung out with the devil while he was living. So after he died, they both tossed Jack out and he became this doomed soul, wandering around with nothing but a glowing coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and he’s been roaming around ever since. The Irish people called his ghost Jack of the Lantern, which, you know, became jack-o’-lantern.”

“This Jack ghost,” said Azalea, “you ever meet him, Zack?”

“Nope.”

“How about you, Mrs. Jennings?”

“Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure,” said Judy, turning to park where a guy flapping a flag directed her.

“They say people carve pumpkins and turn them into lanterns to scare off Jack and all the other spirits roaming around on Halloween night,” said Zack.

“How about that dude?” said Azalea, gesturing at the flag waver, who was costumed in a bedsheet and skeleton mask. “Is he a ghost?”

“No,” said Malik. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to see him.”

“But Zack and Mrs. Jennings could, right?” said Azalea. She’d missed a lot of what had happened when Zack and Malik were dealing with the roaming spirits underneath their middle school, because, well, Azalea’s body (and brain) had been taken over by an evil ancestor.

Fortunately, Azalea’s possession had lasted less than a day. When the evil spirit left her, her memories of the event said buh-bye, too, which was weird because Azalea usually had a photographic memory. She didn’t have to cram for exams; she had all the textbook pages burned into her brain cells.

So of course Azalea remembered the time when Zack told her that he could see ghosts.

His stepmom, Judy, had the gift, too. His dad used to
have it but lost it when he turned thirteen. The gift had returned, however, when he really, really needed it: when Zack was being chased through a maze of tunnels by a brains-gobbling zombie.

Of course, his dad might have relost his ghost-seeing ability just as quickly as he had refound it; it could have been a one-time-only, emergency-situation type of deal. The jury was still out on that one, his dad said (probably because he was a lawyer).

Malik? He hadn’t been able to see any of the ghosts he and Zack had bumped into under the school. Zack figured it was because Malik was too smart: His rational brain overrode any irrational woo-woo junk trying to creep in.

Azalea? She’d been out to lunch mentally when all the ghosts started popping up. The jury was still out on her, too.

And Zipper? Zip saw everything Zack saw, maybe more. Every once in a while, the dog would sit in the middle of a room, staring at a blank wall, and Zack knew his dog had spotted some sort of spirit lurking behind the plasterboard.

“Come on, you guys,” said Judy when the car was parked. “Let’s go pick some pumpkins. Ones with good shapes for scary faces!”

Zipper barked in agreement.

It was his “hurry up and let me out” bark. It’d been a long car ride, so he wanted to find a pumpkin, too.

One shaped like a fire hydrant.

“So, have
you heard from your dad?” Judy asked Azalea as they picked their way through the patch looking for their perfect pumpkin.

“Yeah,” said Azalea, whose father was in the army. “His deployment is almost up. He’ll be stateside in time for Christmas.”

“That’s great,” said Zack, who was pulling a little red wagon loaded with the two tumbling pumpkins he and Malik had already chosen because they were exactly what they were looking for: tall and oblong, perfect for carving a Frankenstein face or, in Malik’s case, the silhouette of a headless horseman galloping on his thundering steed while holding his head high above his shoulders.

Malik liked to carve.

Zipper was also riding in the wagon, his front paws perched on top of one of the pumpkins so he could stand up and ride his chariot like he was a pharaoh hound.

“Mrs. Jennings?” said Malik.

“Yes?”

“Zack and I have already selected our jack-o’-lanterns.”

“Oh. Do you guys want to go grab some cider or something?”

“No, thank you,” said Malik. “I’m more interested in attacking that corn maze.”

“Really?” said Zack. “Didn’t you get enough maze running a couple weeks ago?”

“You know me,” said Malik. “I love a puzzle and a fresh challenge.”

True. When Zack first met Malik, he was working two Sudokus at once.

“Would you like to join us in the maze, Azalea?” Malik asked.

“Nah. I still need to find my pumpkin or one of those mangel-wurzels.”