The Black Heart Crypt

Barnabas Ickleby, disguised as Jack the Lantern, used Norman Ickes’s body to mark off ten paces from the door of the original Ickleby crypt to the center of the empty tomb.

“… eight, nine, ten.”

When he reached that spot, he turned to the south and marked off ten more. He turned once more and marched off five long strides.

Then he stopped and gazed down at the scuffed soil near the pointy tips of his riding boots.

“Is that where you hid your weapons?” asked Father Abercrombie, cowering under a cramped stone archway.

“Yes!” croaked Jack. “Before I died, I built this crypt and secretly hid my treasures! The gold, which you, good father, stole from me, and a fine arsenal of hand-tooled weapons!”

Jack dropped to his knees to claw at the dirt with his fingers.

“Guns will provide the quickest means for me to replenish the treasure you purloined. And what’s the sense of being alive if I am not rich, as well?”

Raking his hands across the hard-packed soil, he gouged out first a shallow hole and then a deeper trench.

“Huzzah!” he shouted when he uncovered his first glimpse of the strongbox’s rusty steel lid. “I am once more complete!”