The Black Heart Crypt

Azalea was seated in her usual spot near the rear of the bus, so she saw him first.

A guy dressed all in black and wearing one of those hats they wear in Colonial Williamsburg came charging down the cemetery hill on a horse.

“Um, Ms. Tiedeman?” she called up to the bus driver.

The guy on the horse was gaining on them. Azalea could see he was wearing a mask that made his head look like a burlap pumpkin, complete with the triangle eyes and nose and the sawtooth jack-o’-lantern grin.

“Ms. Tiedeman?” She shouted it this time.

The bus driver looked up at her rearview mirror.

“What’s the problem back there, Azalea?”

The horse rider raced past Azalea’s window. He was moving faster than the bus. She heard him scream, “Onward, Satan! Fly, Satan, fly!”

Great. Pumpkin Head’s horse was named Satan.

“I think this guy wants us to pull over.”

The bus driver leaned forward to check her side-view mirror.

“Stand and deliver!” the horse rider shouted as he drew parallel to the driver’s window.

“What?” said Ms. Tiedeman.

“Stand and deliver, I say!”

“Yeah? Well, I say, ‘Shut up and go away!’ ”

“Pull over to the side of the road, wench!”

“Sorry, pal. I have a schedule to keep.”

Azalea felt the rumbling bus accelerate.

“Everybody buckled up?” the bus driver shouted at the panoramic mirror, in which she could see all the kids. “Grab hold of a seat back and brace yourself!”

Then she pressed the pedal to the metal.

But the black stallion, with bubbly foam streaming out around its mouth bit, pumped it up a notch, too. The colonial jockey reached down into a saddlebag and pulled out a flaming lantern, which he hurled about twenty yards up the road.

It hit the asphalt and erupted into a gassy fireball.

“Hang on, kids!” Ms. Tiedeman pulled her steering wheel hard to the right and then immediately back to the left, sending the school bus careening through a cloud of smoke, but clear of the blaze.

Azalea turned around and saw that the bandit on horseback was behind the bus now, having just blown through the smoke cloud where the lantern grenade had exploded.

He spurred his horse hard, and in an instant, horse and rider were only a few feet away from the bus’s rear bumper.

Being a soldier’s daughter, Azalea leapt into action.

She raced to the back of the bus.

“Azalea?” shouted the bus driver. “Sit down! I’m pulling over.”

“Not yet. I’ll knock this dude on his butt.” She reached the rear emergency exit. The masked man was right outside and standing up in his saddle.

Excellent!

Azalea would kick open the door and whack him off his pony.

She reached for the handle.

Pumpkin Head leapt up, grabbed hold of a light or something.

And hauled himself onto the roof of the bus!