THE HAUNTED MYSTERY SERIES BY CHRIS GRABENSTEIN
The Crossroads
Winner of the Agatha Award and the Anthony Award
The Hanging Hill
Winner of the Agatha Award
The Smoky Corridor
The Black Heart Crypt
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Chris Grabenstein
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grabenstein, Chris.
The black heart crypt / Chris Grabenstein. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (The haunted mystery series; bk. 4)
Summary: A 200-year-old ghost inhabits a living ancestor in order to take revenge on eleven-year-old Zack and his family.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89987-4
[1. Ghosts—Fiction. 2. Demonology—Fiction. 3. Revenge—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G7487 Bl 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2011001939
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
for J. J. Myers,
who is the love of my life and,
hopefully, my afterlife
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Zack Jennings did not want to chase a slobbering black dog with glowing red eyeballs up into the Haddam Hill Cemetery three nights before Halloween.
It was Zipper’s idea.
They were in the backyard after dinner, playing with a squishy yellow ball, when Zipper picked up the other dog’s scent and went tearing down the highway after it.
“Zipper? Halt! Stay! Come!”
Zack wasn’t exactly sure which command to use to stop his dog from chasing after the thundering black beast, which had to be some kind of hellhound; otherwise its eyes wouldn’t be a pair of red-hot coals.
But Zipper did not halt, stay, or come. The small dog slipped through the cemetery’s wrought-iron railings to pursue the monster, which had so many rippling muscles Zack figured it must belong to the Gym for Gigantic Dogs.
Of course he couldn’t squeeze between the railings like Zipper had, and he wasn’t much at scaling fences, especially when his glasses got all foggy, so he dashed around to the back of the cemetery, where he knew there was a gate because one night, back in June, he and his friend Davy had hidden in this very same cemetery to escape a knife-wielding nut job whose body was being controlled by an evil ancestor.
A dead evil ancestor.
Yep. Ghosts can do that. They can slip their souls into the bodies of family members and totally take them over.
Zack yanked open the gate and shuffled through the sea of leaves smothering the ground between tombstones. A chilly autumn nip was in the air. The moon was hidden behind a pile of angry dark clouds. The sky was a murky black. Three nights before Halloween, this cemetery was creepier than ever.
“Zipper?” Zack’s voice echoed off a marble monument. “Where are you, boy?”
Finally, his dog barked a quick volley of yaps to let Zack know he was extremely busy.
Then Zack heard a deep, throaty rumble. The demon dog!
“Hang on, Zip! I’m coming!”
Zack swung around a concrete angel and raced over to a tomb the size of a small cabin—the biggest, darkest mausoleum in the whole Haddam Hill Cemetery. Its arched wooden doorway was sealed tight with a black heart-shaped lock. Even in the gloom of night, Zack could read the name carved into the stone slab over the entryway:
ICKLEBY
“Zipper?” No answer.
Zack trotted around the stone building, which sort of looked like a miniature church made out of gray Lego blocks.
“Zipper?”
He heard a weird whimper that sounded like a weary sheep bleat.
“Zip?”
His dog came padding around the corner of the blockhouse with a bewildered grin on his snout.
“The big black dog disappeared on you, didn’t he, boy?”
Zipper wagged his tail excitedly, as if to say, Yeah, yeah. It was freaky.
Zack bent down to rub his buddy’s head.
“Well, maybe next time you’ll listen to me when I tell you not to chase after devil dogs.”
Zipper leapt up to lick Zack’s face. Zack laughed.
That is, he laughed until he heard the sharp slice of a shovel blade digging into dirt.