The Black Heart Crypt

“So where exactly is Norman Ickes?” Zack asked the ghost of the riverboat gambler. “We need to find him.”

“He went for a horseback ride.” The gambler looked past Zack and sneered at the three great-aunts. “Good evening, ladies.”

“Where’s Norman?” Zack asked again, louder this time.

“Silly boy. Barnabas and the hardware-store clerk are long gone.”

“Wait a minute,” said Judy. “Crazy Izzy was the one inside Norman at the diner.”

“Yes, but that was before Barnabas decided it was his turn to pillage and plunder.”

Another Ickleby faded into view. This one was wearing a powdered wig and looked like the guys who signed the Declaration of Independence. “You simpering fools. Barnabas, my villainous grandfather, has absconded with the body you seek.”

“Barnabas was evil, too?” said Zack.

“Ha! He was the most evil of us all!”

Three more Icklebys, all from the 1800s, judging by their clothes and goofy sideburns, appeared outside the crypt.

“He longed to ride again!” said one.

“To terrorize the king’s highway as Jack the Lantern,” said another.

“Who’s Jack the Lantern?” asked Judy.

“The infamous child snatcher,” said the man in the Paul Revere wig. “The blackest sheep of our entire family! The one who showed us all the way, who set us on the path to perdition!”

“Why, if it weren’t for Barnabas,” said the riverboat gambler, “we all would have lived very boring lives.”

“Deaths, too!” added one of the guys with mutton-chop sideburns, which connected under his nose.

Now all nine of the lingering Ickleby souls were laughing outside the mausoleum bearing their name.

“Barnabas done took off,” wheezed a toothless gold miner in a beat-up ten-gallon hat. “And y’all ain’t never gonna catch him, neither! Come on, fellers, let’s vamoose before these three set in to tossin’ Injun sage sticks at us.”

All of a sudden, the nine gloating ghosts looked lost. Like kids in the mall who can’t find their parents.

“Capital idea,” said the one in the powdered wig. “But where shall we flee?”

“How the heck should I know?” said the gold miner. “I ain’t no Barnabas.”

“Well, we need to flee—somewhere.”

And then they started bickering.

“Well, if I knew where in tarnation to flee, I would have already fled there!”

“Barnabas deserted us.”

“We must fend for ourselves!”

“A most excellent suggestion. Tell me how, and I shall!”

“Wait,” said Zack. “The black heart stone! Where is it?”

“Why, we haven’t a clue,” sneered a vain dandy with golden ringlets. “None of us has ever ventured beyond this cemetery.”

“Then who hid the stone?” demanded Zack.

“Why, Crazy Izzy, of course. I’m sure he’d be happy to tell you exactly where Barnabas told him to stash the stone, but, alas, he no longer can.”

“ ’Cause you dang fools done chanted him off to kingdom come!” wheezed the miner, slapping his dusty knee. “You ain’t never gonna find that dang stone!”

All nine ghosts—none of whom, it seemed to Zack, could think, scheme, or plan without Barnabas’s help—were weeping with laughter when they really should’ve been busy escaping.

However, all nine stopped chuckling the instant they heard a cat howl so loudly it made Zipper jump behind a gravestone to hide.