The Black Heart Crypt

by Chris Grabenstein

  “We will,” said Zack, yanking up his door handle.

  “I’ll call Hannah and Sophie; they have Aunt Ginny’s cell phone.”

  “But wait—they don’t have a car.”

  “They can take a taxi.”

  Zack nodded. He had seen some waiting in the hospital parking lot.

  “Okay. Go. And, Malik?” Judy said.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Set a new world record tearing it apart, okay?”

  “Will do, Mrs. Jennings!”

  “Come on!” said Zack.

  He, Malik, and Zipper headed into the clock tower while Judy jogged across the street and up the block to the bus.

  The crowd grew larger behind the hastily erected police barriers on Main Street.

  Judy saw Scot Smith, the principal of the middle school; Sheriff Ben Hargrove and half the North Chester Police Department; Mr. Ickes and the gum-cracking hardware store employee from TV, Stephen Snertz; not to mention all sorts of TV camera crews, which kept piling out of vans with satellite dishes on their roofs.

  Jack the Lantern was back on the bus with Azalea and the other schoolchildren, several of whom Judy could hear sobbing through the windows.

  A police officer carefully tried to approach the horse and got a nasty kick for his trouble.

  “He has guns!” Judy heard someone say behind her.

  “Is it really Norman Ickes?” asked another.

  “What’s with that mask? He looks like a jack-o’-lantern.”

  “You mean a jackass!” shouted Stephen Snertz very bravely, because the police had their weapons trained toward the bus. Snertz stood with a small group in front of the hardware store. “Who does he think he is, anyway? Saying he wants me to ransom my stupid nephew?” Now he gave Mr. Ickes, Norman’s father, a quick shove. “I told you: Your son is nuttier than squirrel poop!”

  Judy pulled out her cell phone and hit the speed dial number she had programmed to ring Aunt Ginny’s cell phone.

  “Yes? Hello?”

  “Aunt Sophie, the dybbuk is here on Main Street. He’s hijacked a busload of children!”

  “Jack the Lantern strikes again, eh?”

  “We three are needed. Immediately, if not sooner.”

  “Has Zack found the black heart stone?”

  “Not yet. But he will.”

  “Wonderful. Ginny is in the recovery room. Hannah and I are on our way. She’s outside, organizing transportation. It’s time we sent the first and last of these Ickleby demons straight home to hell!”

  After quickly sniffing the ground floor of the clock tower, Zipper charged up the spiral staircase.

  Cheesy feet.

  He smelled what he had smelled on Halloween night.

  Every step smelled like cheesy feet.

  Senses fully engaged, the dog zipped up five stories, round and round, to the top of the clock tower.

  Zack and Malik were huffing and puffing behind him.

  The two boys were breathing hard through their mouths.

  That meant they weren’t using their snouts so they didn’t have to smell the stinky sock odor that oozed out of the hardware-store man’s shoes with every step he took.

  That was a good thing.

  Very good.

  Because smelling this much funky foot cheese was a job best fit for a dog!

  Charging up the spiral staircase after Zipper, Zack and Malik finally entered the clockwork room, a chamber on the fifth floor with a ceiling at least fifteen feet tall.

  One whole wall was the back side of the massive clock face. Now that they were inside, Zack could see three or four places where chunks of the milky white glass had been broken out. Dusty shafts of sunlight shot through the holes, casting bright circles on the opposite wall.

  “Fascinating,” said Malik. “I’ve never been inside a clock before.”

  “Me neither,” said Zack.

  There was a ten-foot-square wooden deck in the middle of the crowded room, its oak planks stained with globs of grease and machine oil. A series of toothy gears, spiraling springs, and cogwheels—each one larger than the one before it—climbed up to the cranks and axles that once turned the clock hands.

  “Okay,” said Zack. “If you wanted to hide the stone puzzle, where would you put it?”

  “Someplace high,” said Malik. “You could scale those gear teeth and prop it on a ledge or on top of an idle crankshaft.”

  Zipper barked once. His nose was still glued to the floor, the way it had been all the way up the steps. Now he sniffed a straight line across the wooden deck and came to a large lead weight tied to a thick rope.

  “You think he smells Norman’s scent?” asked Malik.

  “Yes! That’s why he ran up the staircase so fast!”

  Zip went up on his hind legs and barked at the rafters, where the rope looped over a pulley.

  Great.

  Zack Jennings, who had flunked every phys ed test he had ever taken, would need to shinny up a rope to see if Zipper was right.

  “Wish me luck,” he said to Malik.

  Zack knew he was the one who had to do the rope climb.

  Because Malik Sherman was the only kid at Pettimore Middle School who had flunked more P.E. tests than he had.

  The rope was tied to a bell-shaped lead weight, part of the old clock’s winding mechanism, similar to the chained brass pinecones that drove his grandfather’s cuckoo clock.

  Zack grabbed the cord with both hands above his head. Pulling down on the rope while jumping, he lifted himself into the air. He quickly used his feet to pinch the rope and anchor himself in position.

  Now he reached as high as he could with his arms and gripped the rope tightly so he could release his feet and, crunching his stomach muscles, bring his knees to his chest and once again snag the rope between his feet.

  “How’d you do that?” asked Malik.

  “Coach Mike taught me.”

  Now he just had to do it five or six more times.

  And not look down.

  Looking down always made him realize what he was actually doing, and then he couldn’t do it anymore.

  Grunting, groaning, grabbing, and gripping, he finally made it up to the pulley.

  “Is it there?” Malik shouted from below.

  “Hang on.”

  Now Zack had to try something he’d never trained for: While holding on to the rope with one hand and squeezing his feet hard, he reached up and felt around on the top of the grimy crossbeam the pulley was bolted to.

  He felt nothing but splinters.

  So he slid his hand the other way.

  And knocked something off the ledge!

  “Got it!” shouted Malik.

  Zack looked down.

  His friend had made a perfect two-handed breadbasket catch.

  Zipper barked and wagged his tail.

  “Is it the black heart stone?” Zack shouted.

  “Yep! Come on down.”

  Zack slid down the rope.

  Exactly the way his gym teacher, Coach Mike, had told him not to.

  He had nasty rope burns on his palms and knees but he didn’t care. Malik was already twisting and turning the black heart stone and taking it apart!

  “I need to find the signal mirror,” said Zack, rummaging through Aunt Ginny’s bag. “It’s time to call in the herbologists!”

  He found the silvery square and ran over to the clock face.

  There was a broken-out spot about two feet off the floor, between the V and the VI.

  He knelt down to flash Judy the signal.

  He could see her near the school bus, shielding her eyes with one hand, staring at the base of the tower.

  He tilted the mirror back and forth a couple of times, bounced Judy a sunbeam.

  She blinked. Looked up. Waved.

  A raven cawed.

  “Haw-haw-haw.”

  Zack stuck his head through the hole.

  The big black bird was perched on the frozen minute hand.

&nb
sp; It ruffled out its giant wings and took off—flying straight for the big yellow bus!

  Azalea stared at the muzzle of the pistol the masked maniac had pointed at her nose.

  “Where have all these people come from?” he asked.

  “Well, these days, when there’s, like, a disaster, word spreads fast. Text messages, tweets …”

  Jack the Lantern shook his head. His eyeballs were looking crazier and crazier.

  And the nut job had three weapons: two old-fashioned pirate pistols, one very modern revolver.

  “This is not how I had planned it to be! I am outnumbered. Out-armed. I must act boldly! Where is Zachary Jennings? Why is he not on this carriage?”

  “I think he took a sick day,” said Azalea.

  Suddenly, glass shattered.

  A giant black bird busted through the rear window of the bus and swooped up the center aisle. It landed on a seat back and started croaking and cawing like crazy. Glass chips tinkled out of its feathers.

  Pumpkin Head tilted his head sideways and started nodding—like he understood everything the crow creaked out.

  “But did he find the black heart stone?” he snapped.

  “Haw!”

  “Curses!” Pumpkin Head balled up his fist and shook it at the bus’s ceiling. “Why must this Jennings family torment me through the ages?”

  Furious, he clutched Azalea’s arm and dragged her up the aisle to the back door of the bus.

  When the police raised their pistols and rifles in response, the masked man jammed one of his pistols into Azalea’s ear.

  “Satan! Come hither!” he shouted out the broken window as he kicked the door open.

  As the black steed approached the door, the crazed bandit called to the crowd, “Shoot me, and she dies.”

  Now, keeping his back to the school bus and never lowering his pistol, Jack lifted Azalea into his arms and leapt into the horse’s saddle, holding the girl in front of him.

  “Come, lass. You and I are going across the street to visit with your friend.”

  Malik seemed to be having a hard time taking the black heart apart.

  Zack and Zipper were both watching every move he made. Even the ones that didn’t seem to work. Pieces weren’t coming out of the puzzle at the same pace they had when Malik tore the thing apart the first time.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Zack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t perform well under pressure.”

  “Right,” said Zack, backing up toward the clock face. “So me and Zip will just wait over here. Give us a holler when you’ve got the black heart core. We’ll just be waiting.…”

  “Zack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re pressuring me again!”

  “Sorry.”

  Malik swiped some sweat out of his eyes.

  Zack figured he’d better not say anything else.

  So he peeked through the hole in the glass and checked out the action over by the school bus.

  He wished he hadn’t.

  Jack the Lantern was leaping from the back of the bus onto the black horse, using Azalea as his human shield!

  “Watch out!” Judy screamed.

  Aunts Sophie and Hannah were just about to climb out of a taxi when the black stallion came charging around the bus.

  Jack the Lantern had Azalea Torres in front of him on the saddle, so even though all the cops had their weapons trained on him, no one dared shoot at the moving target, for fear they’d accidentally hit the girl.

  “Look at him!” shouted Stephen Snertz. “Hiding behind a girl! I told you—the guy’s a wuss!”

  Suddenly, Jack pulled up on the reins and wheeled his snorting horse to the right. The stallion made a sharply angled turn, mirroring the move a knight makes in chess.

  “Oh, crap!” screamed Stephen Snertz when he realized that the masked demon had an arm over Azalea’s shoulder. In his hand was a pistol aimed straight at the hardware-store clerk.

  Snertz turned and made a mad dash for the door.

  He almost made it, too.

  But Jack the Lantern let loose with a cannon blast from his raised pistol.

  The bullet smacked Snertz in the butt and sent him sailing forward through the hardware-store window. Glass shattered and Snertz landed with a belly flop on all the carved jack-o’-lanterns in the window display, many of which were already wilting after sitting in the sun so long. When the mounted maniac saw Snertz sprawled out in the rotting pumpkin patch, he started laughing insanely. All the police officers lowered their weapons an inch or two to marvel at his madness.

  “Away, Satan! Fly like the wind!”

  With a snick of his tongue and a click of his heels, Jack was once again racing away from the school bus and the hardware store.

  “He’s heading for the clock tower!” someone shouted.

  “Get the kids off the bus!” yelled the sheriff.

  Azalea Torres was Jack’s only remaining hostage.

  A pair of police officers dashed up the street after him while Sheriff Hargrove and his deputies secured the other children.

  Jack leapt from his horse and yanked Azalea out of the saddle. With his modern-looking pistol aimed at her head, they backed toward the doorway of the clock tower.

  “My son and Malik Sherman are in there!” Judy shouted to the police.

  “Keep away, fools!” cried Jack the Lantern. “If any of you dare come in after me, this young lass dies!”

  Judy watched as the demon pulled Azalea into the dark tower and slammed the door shut.

  Now Jack the Lantern held three children hostage: Azalea, Malik, and Zack!

  “Got it!” said Malik.

  Zack pulled back from his peephole.

  “He’s coming!”

  “Who?”

  “Jack the Lantern.”

  “You mean Norman?”

  “Yeah.”

  From down below, they heard a heavy steel beam thudding into a bracket. The door was barred. The police wouldn’t be able to storm the tower and rescue them.

  “He’s got Azalea,” said Zack.

  “Move,” they heard a scratchy voice cry at the bottom of the spiral staircase.

  “Let go of my arm already,” growled Azalea.

  Zack, Malik, and Zipper knelt at the top of the spiral staircase, straining to hear every word echoing up from five stories below.

  “Climb the stairs, missy. I need to parley with Mr. Jennings. He has something I desire.”

  Zack heard the unmistakable sharp click of a pistol hammer being cocked.

  “We’re up here!” he shouted down the steps. “And if you hurt Azalea, I’m going to toss this stupid stone down to my aunts, who just showed up and know what to do with it!”

  “Zack?” Azalea shouted.

  “Yeah?”

  “Pumpkin Head put away his pistol.”

  Good.

  “My name is Jack the Lantern!”

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  Azalea never lost her cool. Zack just hoped she hadn’t lost that photographic memory she was always bragging about, either.

  “We’re coming up,” Zack heard her say. “Let. Go. Of. My. Arm!”

  Now all Zack heard was the heavy thunk-thunk-thunk of boot heels against steel stairs.

  “It’s up to us,” he whispered to Malik. “We three must agree.”

  “About what?”

  “Smashing Barnabas Ickleby’s tiny black heart!”

  “They’re on the second floor,” said Malik, who was still perched at the top of the spiral staircase, counting boot clicks while Zack rummaged through Aunt Ginny’s bag.

  “Okay. I think I’ve got everything we need.” He jammed the signal mirror and party horn into his back pockets. Wadded up the exorcism words into a paper ball. “Malik?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re gonna be our powder man.”

  “Huh?”

  Zack handed Malik a glass jar. “Extract of Newt Eye &
Cow Hoof” was scribbled on its lid.

  “Wait for your cue, then sidearm the whole jar at him.” Zack unscrewed the cap.

  “The powder will fly out.”

  “That’s the idea. Stand over there. Near those gears. Zip? You stick with me.”

  The thunk of the boots became louder. Jack and Azalea were coming closer.

  “Zack?” said Malik.

  “Yeah?”

  “What exactly are we doing here?”

  Zack smiled and shot Malik a wink. “We’re about to become amateur herbologists.”

  Azalea’s head bobbed up in the stairwell first.

  Zack tossed her the paper wad.

  She caught it. Gave him a puzzled look.

  Zack did some rapid-fire hand signals he hoped she understood.

  Azalea nodded. She quickly unfolded the sheet and read it.

  Her eyes bugged out, but she took it all in. Half a second later, she crumpled the paper back up into a ball.

  Now the man in the mask appeared.

  “Greetings, Zachary.”

  Zack just nodded.

  “Where is it, boy?”

  Now Zack held open his right hand. The miniature black heart from the center of the stone was nestled in his palm. “You mean this?”

  “Give it to me!”

  Zack retreated half a step. “No way.”

  “What? You dare refuse me?”

  Zack retreated another half step.

  “I need that black heart.”

  Zack took another backward step.

  Jack the Lantern shoved Azalea aside. Held out his hand. “Give it to me, boy!”

  Zack took one last giant step backward.

  And was standing directly in the spot hit by the sunbeam streaming through the biggest broken-out hole in the clock face.

  He whipped up the signal mirror with his free hand.

  A blinding shaft of light streaked across the room and seared a rectangle of white over Jack the Lantern’s triangle eyeholes.

  The masked man froze in his tracks.

  “Azalea?” shouted Zack. “You’re on!”