The Black Heart Crypt

A half mile up the road, thirteen devilish souls swarmed together outside the buttressed stone walls of the Ickleby family crypt, savoring their newfound freedom.

“The foul curse is finally broken!” proclaimed Barnabas.

“Hang on, Pops,” said Eddie Boy Ickleby, the murdering thief who had died in 1979. His shaggy hair was cut into a mullet—short in the front and on the sides, long in the back. “The black heart lock is still clamped tight to the door, man.”

“It was never the lock that held us prisoner,” said Barnabas. “It was something much stronger.” His mask—a jack-o’-lantern pattern cut into a coarse burlap sack—was cinched around his neck with a frayed rope as thick as any hangman’s noose.

“What’re you bumping your gums about?” demanded the 1930s gangster ghost, Crazy Izzy Ickleby.

“The sinister spell of the three detestable Jennings sisters,” said Barnabas. “They were the ones who sealed our souls inside this wretched tomb with their cursed incantations.”

The spirits now circled around Barnabas were his direct descendants: Silas Ickleby, in his powdered wig; Webley Ickleby, the most notorious mass murderer of the 1820s; Pie-Eyes Ickleby, who had rushed to California in 1849, not to mine for gold but to steal it from those who did; Little Paulie Ickleby, who, with Mad Dog Murphy, had robbed banks during the 1950s.

“Do you suppose those three sisters might lock us up once again?” This came from Hornus Ickleby, a scallywag who, like so many of these thirteen Icklebys, had met his death at the noosed end of a rope.

“Rest easy, gentlemen,” hissed Barnabas. “We simply need to seize the black heart stone before the Jennings sisters reassemble it and repeat their abominable spell!”

“Seize it?” snarled Cornelius Ickleby, an embezzler who, in the late 1800s, had devised clever Wall Street swindles. He was crouched near a fallen branch. “Look here—I cannot even seize this twig lying before me on the ground. My hands pass clean through it.”

“You idle-headed, inky-fingered clerk,” sneered Barnabas. “As ghosts, we can do little. To thrive, we must find a living, breathing body!”

“Say what, Old Scratch?” said Bad Bart Ickleby, a riverboat gambler who had died with five aces up his sleeve.

“He’s right, man,” said Eddie Boy. “We gotta find us a new body.”

“How we gonna do that, huh, huh?” demanded Crazy Izzy.

Barnabas smirked beneath his mask. “Do not worry, children. A fresh body will come to us when the veil between our world and theirs is at its thinnest.”

“And when exactly is that?”

“Today!” croaked Barnabas. “Halloween.”