The Black Heart Crypt

The weakened ghost of Crazy Izzy stood beside the truck he had stolen and watched as Norman Ickes, now controlled by Barnabas, marched out of the Ickleby crypt.

The other Icklebys oozed through the walls to watch with him.

Barnabas was carrying a moldy tricornered colonial hat and a sack with some kind of round ball sagging at its bottom. The scrawny little hardware-store clerk looked like he was going to dress up like George Washington and go bowling.

“What’s in the bag?” asked Cornelius.

“Insurance.”

Barnabas had Norman set the ball bag down on the ground beside the giant black horse. Then he stepped inside the trailer and started rummaging around.

“Now what the heck you lookin’ for?” asked Izzy.

Norman came out holding a feed bag, a coil of rope, and a pair of fetlock-trimming scissors.

“These,” said Norman, his voice raw and raspy.

“What ho, father?” jibed his son, Lucius. “Do you plan on feeding and grooming your steed?”

“No, you simpering fool.”

Izzy watched as the man who looked like Norman cut two pyramid eyes, a nose hole, and a jagged jack-o’-lantern smile into the burlap feed bag.

“I have bridled and saddled my horse. Now I must prepare myself for the journey to come.” He glared at Izzy. “Thanks to you, the police are looking for my new face.”

Barnabas tugged the burlap bag down over Norman’s head and cut a short length of rope to cinch it around the neck. Next he dusted off his worm-eaten tricornered hat—the hat he had been buried in. It fit his newly masked head perfectly.

“You see, dear children,” Barnabas croaked, “this is how I fooled everyone into thinking I was a goodly man. I disguised myself whenever I rode the king’s highways, pillaging and plundering as the villainous thief known as Jack the Lantern!”

Fully masked, Barnabas worked open the smaller sack and pulled out what Izzy had figured to be a ball.

Only it was a skull.

“Whose head bone is that?” asked Izzy.

“Mine, of course,” said Barnabas. “Without it, the three sisters can do nothing more to stop me!”

He jammed the skull into a saddlebag and climbed aboard his muscular steed. Grabbing both reins with one hand, he snicked his tongue. At his slightest tug, the horse moved left, then right, then left again.

Barnabas patted the side of his glistening stallion.

“Good boy, Satan,” he whispered.

He raised his right arm. The inky raven fluttered down to perch on it.

The whine of police sirens drew closer. Crazy Izzy felt too queasy to care. Besides, he was a ghost again. The coppers would never even see him hanging around outside the crypt.

“Do you mean to abandon us?” asked Lucius. “Yes.”

“Wait! You cannot do this! You are the head of this family. None of us will know what to do if you are not here to guide us!”

“Too bad!”

Ebony, now Satan, reared up on his hind legs and kicked at the air with his front hooves. The raven took flight. The masked rider raised his cocked hat high above his head.

“Farewell, foolish children! Jack the Lantern rides again!”