The Black Heart Crypt

Francine Potter clearly saw a tall woman with a mop of curly hair standing beside the lamppost where the sidewalk met the pathway up to her stoop.

The woman appeared to be in her twenties and was wearing a long, flouncy dress that fluttered in the breeze.

“Why are you standing there gawking at me?” Francine demanded.

The curly-haired woman drifted closer.

“Hello, Francine.”

“What? Do I know you?”

“Of course you do, Franny.”

“What did you call me?”

“Franny.”

“Nobody calls me that. Not since my sister …”

The curly-haired woman nodded slowly.

Francine Potter took one step backward. “No. My sister is dead.…”

The woman gave her another eerie nod.

“Susan?”

“Hello, Franny.”

“Ha! That’s impossible. When was your hair curly like that?”

“When I was happy. When I was an actress at the Hanging Hill Playhouse.”

“Acting was a foolish waste of your time and education. Father and Mother both said so.”

“Acting made me happy.”

“Well, Susan, none of us are put on this earth to be happy. We are put here to do our jobs.”

Francine couldn’t believe she was having this conversation.

“Who are you? Why are you pretending to be my dead sister?”

“I’m not pretending.”

“Impossible.”

“Everything is possible on Halloween.”

“No. You are not my sister.”

“Yes. I am. I need you, Francine.”

“What?”

“I need your body.”

“What? Go away. And next Halloween put together a better costume. You don’t even look the way my sister did when she died.”

“You mean like this?”

In a horrifying flash, the curly-haired woman shriveled into a withered husk of ashen flesh and bone. Her paper-thin skin shrank tight against her jagged face. The mop of curly hair wormed its way down into her scalp.

It was truly her sister. Susan Potter Jennings. The way she had looked when she died.

“We are flesh of the same flesh,” gasped the hideous creature. “Blood of the same blood.”

Francine stumbled backward into her house. Slammed the door shut.

Suddenly, her body was wracked with spasms of pain.

A voice echoed inside her head: “I have unfinished business with Zachary.”

Francine slumped to the carpeted floor. Her mind and memories swirled down a darkening sinkhole toward oblivion.

Zack’s mother was alive again.