The Black Heart Crypt

Somewhere in the distance, Zack heard a stray cat meowing at the moon.

Then he heard boots clomping up behind him.

“I heard you callin’ to your dog, boy,” said the man, who kept coming closer. “Zipper. What kind of name is that for a dog?”

Slowly, Zack turned around.

The man was standing six feet behind him, holding his clay-draggled shovel like a knight’s lance with one hand, the flickering lantern with the other.

“Well,” said Zack, wishing his throat weren’t so dry, “Zipper is very fast and …”

“Dogs ought to be named Fido, Duke, Sparky. What you two doin’ here, anyway? Cemetery’s closed.”

“Um,” said Zack, “Zipper chased a cat up the hill from the highway.”

“A cat?” The creepy gravedigger raised the lantern up beside his craggy face. “You sure it weren’t a dog? A big black dog?”

Zack gulped. “Pardon?”

The gravedigger bugged out his eyes. “A big black dog with fiery-red eyeballs. What some folks call a Black Shuck, a ghostly black beast what guards graveyards from foul spirits.” The man grinned menacingly. “Wonder why he let you two in.”

“It was just a cat,” said Zack.

The stray cat yowled again. With its strangled cry, it sounded like a baby screaming for its bottle.

“Well, we better get going.”

“Yep. You should. Ain’t very wise to be in a boneyard this close to Halloween unless, of course, you’ve got some serious business to attend to, such as digging a new grave.”

Zack was scared but also confused, so he said, “Huh?”

The gravedigger nodded toward the hole he’d been scooping out. “Mr. Henry H. Heckman has arrived just in time for Halloween, when he’ll crawl up out of the ground to go take care of whatever business he left undone when he died.”

“Heckman?”

“That’s what I said, boy. Putting him in the family plot. There’s all sorts of Heckmans buried up here on Haddam Hill.”

Yeah, Zack wanted to say. He had met one of them back in June: a dead bus driver named Bud Heckman.

“Yep,” the gravedigger went on, “Heckmans have lived and died in these parts since before the Revolutionary War.”

“Just like the Icklebys, huh?”

The gravedigger lost his sly smile. “Icklebys ain’t from around here, boy.”

“Really? I saw their name on that big tomb over there, so I figured …”

“Icklebys don’t belong here and neither do you two! Git!”

Zipper snarled.

The gravedigger raised his shovel. “Git!”

“We’re ‘gitting,’ ” said Zack.

“Good! And don’t never come back here no more!”

“Don’t worry,” said Zack. “We won’t.”

Because a graveyard was the last place Zack Jennings wanted to be this close to Halloween.

Too many worm-eaten ghosts with pinochle cards up their snouts.