The Black Heart Crypt (20 page)

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 preferred 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?”

“Yeah,” said Zack. “We saw a bunch of swirling police lights up that way when we were driving home.”

“Sisters?” said Aunt Hannah, sounding mad. “Family meeting. Outside. Now! And this time, Virginia, you
will
tell us the truth!”

Hannah, Sophie, Ginny, and their cats scampered out the back door to the deck.

“Excuse me,” said Aunt Francine, her voice groggy. “Might I trouble you people for a glass of water?”

“Of course,” said Judy. “Zack?”

“Got it.” He grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with tap water.

“Don’t you have bottled water?”

“Sorry,” said Zack.

“Never mind, then.” She fumbled in her jacket for a pack of cigarettes.

“Um, there’s no smoking allowed in this house,” said Judy.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve had a very difficult night.”

“Sorry.”

Aunt Francine fumed. It was very similar to the way Zack’s real mother used to fume. Zack figured fuming ran in the family.

“Who, exactly, are you again?” Aunt Francine said to Judy.

“She’s my mom,” said Zack.

“Was I talking to you, Zachary?”

Zack looked down at his shoes. “No.”

“I didn’t think so. So tell me, Judy, did George hide his son’s existence while you two were dating? Is that how he tricked you into becoming his stepmother?”

“Ms. Potter,” said Judy, “I love my son.”

“Really? Where is he? I’d love to meet him.”

Zack had heard enough. He looked Aunt Francine straight in the eyes. “How come you have to act this way?”

“What?”

“All mean and bitter and nasty.”

“How dare you speak to me like that! Children should be seen, not heard.”

“Says who?” asked Judy.

“Well, that’s certainly how my parents raised Susan and me. I see you and George have decided to take a more liberal approach.”

“I think you should leave,” said Judy. “Now.”

“What?”

“There’s a motel two miles up the highway. You shouldn’t drive back to Boston tonight, not in your condition. I’ll book you a room with our credit card.”

Aunt Francine stood up, fumbled again for her cigarettes. “I don’t even know why I came here. One minute I’m home dealing with beggars at my doorstep; the next I’m here with the smart-mouthed brat who killed my sister.”

Judy narrowed her eyes. “I’ll call the motel.”

“My, aren’t you congenial?” And with that, Aunt Francine stormed out of the house, furiously flicking her cigarette lighter the whole way.

“What a monster,” muttered Judy.

“Yeah,” said Zack with a smile. “But you know what, Mom?”

“What?”

“When it comes to slaying monsters, you and me make a pretty good team.”