“Let’s run home and grab Zipper,” said Judy as they climbed into their car in the library parking lot. “He needs a break from all those cats.”
“Yeah,” said Zack. “I think he might be allergic. To their claws, anyway.”
It only took about an hour for Zack, Judy, and Zipper to drive from North Chester to the small country church. It was the middle of the afternoon but the sky was already dark under heavy clouds. The white clapboard church building was tucked into a weedy field under a webbed canopy of overgrown trees.
When they piled out of the car, Zack saw a priest dressed all in black standing outside the dilapidated church’s front door.
Everything about Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church looked old. Paint was peeling off the shingles. The door had been painted red ages ago but was now the color of watery tomatoes. The roof was bowed and cracked.
Zipper tucked his tail between his legs. This eerie old church in the middle of nowhere was giving him the willies, too.
“Mrs. Jennings?”
“Yes,” said Judy.
“I’m Father Clayton Abercrombie.”
The Episcopal priest reminded Zack of a nervous ferret from a cartoon.
Judy reached out to shake the priest’s trembling hand.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet with us,” she said. “I’m Judy. This is my stepson, Zack. You met his grandfather a long time ago. Sheriff James Jennings.”
The priest’s left eye twitched. “Tell me—the spirits? Are they stirring again?”
Judy nodded. “Yeah. They’re stirring.”
“Big-time,” added Zack.
Father Abercrombie bit his knuckle. “Has anyone been hurt?”
“A girl,” said Judy. “She was found dead outside the Ickleby crypt in the Haddam Hill Cemetery.”
The priest made a quick sign of the cross and said, “Please, follow me.”
They made their way around the church building to its ancient graveyard.
“The original Ickleby crypt is in the farthest corner,” said Father Abercrombie as they walked through the field of faded headstones, many of which dated back to the 1700s.
“Barnabas Ickleby was the first warden of this parish. A very generous, very munificent man. Provided all the money to erect our original building. He was, of course, initially buried here.”
He gestured toward a sagging marble mausoleum.
Zack and Judy were staring at the blackened earth circling the old Ickleby crypt. It was as if someone had burned a three-foot path around the original family tomb. Dead ivy vines crept up the grime-covered walls.
“My wife and I came to this church when I was a very young man, back in 1977,” said Father Abercrombie. “In no time at all, my parishioners started regaling me with ghost stories about the Icklebys. How, through the centuries, the evil ones rose up from this crypt on Halloween night to walk the earth and wreak havoc. You do know the nature of the twelve men who were buried in this vault with Barnabas?”
Judy nodded. “We have a pretty good idea.”
“Most of the Icklebys, the good ones, were buried out here. You can see their headstones sprinkled in amongst the rest. But the bad ones, well—Barnabas had given the church so much gold, every priest who has ever served here was content to look the other way when it came time to entomb yet another Ickleby sinner behind the heavy doors of their family crypt.”
Father Abercrombie swallowed hard.
“My turn came in 1979. The young thief the newspapers called Eddie Boy was gunned down in a convenience store robbery after slaying the owner and three teenaged customers. Several days before the funeral, I, for the first time, opened the Ickleby crypt—to make certain we had room for yet another casket.”
The priest started nibbling on his knuckle again.
“Then what happened?” asked Judy.
“Days later, the evil revealed itself.”
“On the morning of the funeral,” the priest continued, “when next I opened the doors to the mausoleum, all of the coffins had been rearranged!”
“Did somebody sneak in and do it as a prank?” asked Zack.
“Impossible. That door is six inches thick. The lock is made of iron. Only I have the key.”
The clergyman crept closer to the creepy crypt.
“I tried to ignore what I had seen, to construct a rational explanation. Perhaps there was metal in the coffins and a shift in the earth’s magnetic field had caused them to slide into their unusual configuration.”
Maybe there was an earthquake, thought Zack.
“When the funeral service concluded and the pallbearers carried Edward’s coffin into the tomb, the caskets had moved once more! The one against the wall was upside down. Three had organized themselves into an ‘I’ formation. An ‘I’ for ‘Ickleby’!”
The priest stared at the crypt doors—as if he feared they’d suddenly swing open and swallow him whole.
“Months later, on Halloween, some children reported hearing voices inside the mausoleum. That night, horrible deeds were done.”
“By trick-or-treaters?” asked Zack.
“Trick-or-treating children do not burn down barns or slash the throats of innocent animals. They do not kill the one witness who survived Eddie Boy’s convenience store rampage and testified against him in court.”
“All this happened on Halloween night?” asked Judy.
“Yes. The following morning, I once again entered the Ickleby crypt.”
“Had the coffins been rearranged again?” asked Judy.
“All thirteen were upside down and resting on their lids.”
Zack’s eyes went wide as he imagined it.
“I didn’t know what to do,” said Father Abercrombie. “I could not harbor the spirits of demons here on sacred soil!”
And so you shipped them off to us, thought Zack. Nice.
“With nowhere else to turn, I consulted a wise old woman who lived in a hovel deep in the woods. I had heard of her … reputation.”
Judy said it first: “Was she a witch?”
“Some would certainly call her that. Her name, as I recall, was Harriet, and she was quite familiar with the Icklebys and their evil ways, for she claimed a swarm of Ickleby ghosts had, on that very same Halloween night, slain her favorite pet. A black cat she called Grizzmaldo.”
“When was this?” asked Judy.
“Thirty years ago. My wife—may she rest in peace—thought I had gone mad, prattling on about the ghosts of the evil Icklebys, the coffins in the crypt, decapitated cats, witchy women in the woods.…”
“How did this Harriet know it was Ickleby spirits who killed her cat?” Judy asked.
“She saw them. A crowd of twelve ghosts, one brandishing an axe. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘We be Icklebys,’ they replied. ‘This night belongs to us and all those who would do evil even after death!’ The one with the axe used it on her black cat.”
Zipper moaned. He wouldn’t wish that kind of cruelty on any creature, even ones with claws.
“I begged the wise woman of the woods to do something. Anything. This churchyard had to be cleansed of its foul spirits! She agreed. Said she wanted the cursed Ickleby corpses moved as far from their familiar haunts as possible. She told me she would contact certain cousins, three distant sisters who might be able to help us both.”
Zack looked at Judy. They both realized who Harriet’s three cousins had to be: Ginny, Sophie, and Hannah.
Now the priest stared down at Zack. “That week, all my prayers were answered. Your grandfather, Sheriff James Jennings—may God bless his soul—contacted me. He told me he wasn’t sure why, but his sisters had insisted that he call to tell me about ‘the empty Spratling crypt.’ ”
“Spratling!” mused Zack.
“A wealthy family that lived in North Chester, the town where your grandfather was sheriff.”