The Black Heart Crypt

“This is the place,” rasped Jack the Lantern as the car he had hijacked pulled into what was left of the asphalt driveway leading down to Saint Barnabas church.

A man holding out a trembling flashlight came out of the ramshackle rectory house. Flickering shadows danced across his anguished face.

“Who’s there? Who are you?”

Even from fifty feet away, the soul inside Norman Ickes’s body recognized the nervous old man.

“Father Clayton Abercrombie,” he whispered with great satisfaction.

He turned to his driver.

“Mr. Lawson?”

“Y-y-yes?”

“Thank you very kindly for the ride.”

“Bop him on the head!” urged Norman’s voice inside Jack’s head. “Use the gun Izzy stole!”

“What an excellent suggestion,” said the masked highwayman.

“What?” said the driver. “I didn’t suggest any—”

Jack the Lantern knocked the man out cold with the butt of his pistol.

“Ooh,” purred Norman’s voice. “I love doing that.”

“What’s going on up there?” Jack the Lantern heard Father Abercrombie cry.

Taking strides as long as Norman’s legs would allow, he swept down the hill toward the churchyard, where Father Abercrombie stood quaking like a branch full of dead leaves.

The church building behind the priest was not at all as Jack remembered it. The stained glass windows lacked life or color, for there were no lights burning inside the house of God. How fitting, he thought. God has lost. The darkness has won.

“Good evening, Father Abercrombie.”

“Who are you?”

“An old friend of this humble chapel.”

“Why do you wear that mask?”

“So you might know who I truly am.”

Father Abercrombie’s lips quivered. “Wh-wh-who, then, are you?”

“In my time, many called me Jack the Lantern. Though here, in this place, I was known as Saint Barnabas’s most generous benefactor.”

“What?”

“Allow me to introduce myself, Father Abercrombie.” He dipped into a grand bow. “I, sir, am Squire Barnabas Ickleby, the man for whom this church was named!”