“What’s in the bag?” asked Cornelius.
“Insurance.”
Barnabas had Norman set the ball bag down on the ground beside the giant black horse. Then he stepped inside the trailer and started rummaging around.
“Now what the heck you lookin’ for?” asked Izzy.
Norman came out holding a feed bag, a coil of rope, and a pair of fetlock-trimming scissors.
“These,” said Norman, his voice raw and raspy.
“What ho, father?” jibed his son, Lucius. “Do you plan on feeding and grooming your steed?”
“No, you simpering fool.”
Izzy watched as the man who looked like Norman cut two pyramid eyes, a nose hole, and a jagged jack-o’-lantern smile into the burlap feed bag.
“I have bridled and saddled my horse. Now I must prepare myself for the journey to come.” He glared at Izzy. “Thanks to you, the police are looking for my new face.”
Barnabas tugged the burlap bag down over Norman’s head and cut a short length of rope to cinch it around the neck. Next he dusted off his worm-eaten tricornered hat—the hat he had been buried in. It fit his newly masked head perfectly.
“You see, dear children,” Barnabas croaked, “this is how I fooled everyone into thinking I was a goodly man. I disguised myself whenever I rode the king’s highways, pillaging and plundering as the villainous thief known as Jack the Lantern!”
Fully masked, Barnabas worked open the smaller sack and pulled out what Izzy had figured to be a ball.
Only it was a skull.
“Whose head bone is that?” asked Izzy.
“Mine, of course,” said Barnabas. “Without it, the three sisters can do nothing more to stop me!”
He jammed the skull into a saddlebag and climbed aboard his muscular steed. Grabbing both reins with one hand, he snicked his tongue. At his slightest tug, the horse moved left, then right, then left again.
Barnabas patted the side of his glistening stallion.
“Good boy, Satan,” he whispered.
He raised his right arm. The inky raven fluttered down to perch on it.
The whine of police sirens drew closer. Crazy Izzy felt too queasy to care. Besides, he was a ghost again. The coppers would never even see him hanging around outside the crypt.
“Do you mean to abandon us?” asked Lucius. “Yes.”
“Wait! You cannot do this! You are the head of this family. None of us will know what to do if you are not here to guide us!”
“Too bad!”
Ebony, now Satan, reared up on his hind legs and kicked at the air with his front hooves. The raven took flight. The masked rider raised his cocked hat high above his head.
“Farewell, foolish children! Jack the Lantern rides again!”
Zack and Judy reached the crossroads of Highway 31 and State Route 13.
To the west, they saw the swirling reflection of red police lights.
“You think the ghost horse ran somebody off the road?” asked Zack.
“I guess it’s possible. We don’t really know all the rules for ghost animals, do we?”
“Not really. There was that crazed cat at the Hanging Hill Playhouse. But it was more like a zombie than a ghost.”
They made their way to the Rocky Hill Farms subdivision and cruised up Stonebriar Road to the lip of their driveway.
“Uh-oh,” Judy said as glanced up at the house. “More trouble.”
“Yeah,” said Zack, because he saw it, too: a frantic shadow-puppet show playing on the living room curtains. A tall woman being chased by three short ones. Several cats flying through the air. Lamps and vases falling willy-nilly.
“Come on,” said Judy.
They ran to the house.
The front door flew open.
A tall woman in a business suit stumbled out backward. She was kind of wobbly on her legs, like her high-heel shoes didn’t fit.
“I need to see Zachary!”
Uh-oh, Zack thought. The voice sounded familiar.
The tall woman whipped around.
Double uh-oh. It was Aunt Francine.
His dead mother’s sister!
“There you are!” said Aunt Francine, her eyes swimming in crazy circles. “Zachary!”
She reached out both arms—Frankenstein-style—and stumbled forward.
“Stand back!” shouted Aunt Ginny as the three Jennings sisters came toddling onto the porch, each one holding a white sage stick. Their three cats streamed out behind them and circled Aunt Francine, who was still staring down at Zack.
Zack took one step backward.
“Where were you?” Aunt Francine demanded.
“We went for a ride,” said Judy, stepping in front of Zack to shield him.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Judy.”
Zack didn’t like the way Aunt Francine sounded, because frankly, she sounded just like his dead mother!
“Do I know you?” asked Judy.
Aunt Francine’s lips twitched up into the most hideous smile Zack had ever seen. “We’ve never been formally introduced, but I know all about you.”
“Don’t listen to her,” cried Aunt Hannah. “That is the dybbuk speaking.”
“The what?” said Judy.
“The dybbuk,” Aunt Hannah repeated, pronouncing the word “dih-buk.”
“That’s my aunt Francine,” Zack finally blurted. “My real mother’s sister.”
“That’s right, Zachary,” said Francine. “Your real mother!”
The three sisters circled her on the porch.
“In Jewish folklore,” said Aunt Hannah, remaining incredibly calm, “a dybbuk is the malicious disembodied soul of a dead sinner that has attached itself to the body of a living relative.”
“Therefore,” said Aunt Ginny, “this woman who appears to be Zack’s aunt is currently possessed by the soul of someone dead.”
“Are you sure about all this?” asked Judy.
“Oh, yes, dearie,” said Aunt Ginny. “Quite.”
“I had to come back,” said the dybbuk. “I did not fulfill my mission in life!”
Aunt Hannah reached into a pouch tied to her belt. “Hear that? Pure dybbuk talk.”
“Oh, yes,” said Aunt Sophie. “They always say that. Blah-blah-blah ‘mission in life.’ ”
“Leave me alone!” hollered Aunt Francine. “All of you! I only came back to take care of Zack the way I should have taken care of him when I was alive!”
Zack’s jaw fell open.
He knew exactly whose spirit had taken over Aunt Francine’s body.
Susan Potter Jennings’s.
His dead mother.
Sheriff Ben Hargrove of the North Chester Police Department stood outside the Ickleby crypt on Haddam Hill with a cluster of Connecticut State Police officers.
They were all staring at an empty horse trailer hitched to a pickup truck.
“I can’t believe Norman Ickes would do such a thing,” said the sheriff, shaking his head.
“Would you like to look at the freeze-frame from the diner’s security camera again?” said the state police detective.
“No need,” said Hargrove. “I just never pegged Norman to be a violent criminal, waving a gun around like that.”
“This the same cemetery where you found the dead girl on Halloween?”
“Yeah,” said Hargrove. “You think there’s a connection?”
“I’m starting to. This kid, Norman—they sell hunting knives at his hardware store?”
Hargrove nodded. “Herman Ickes, Norman’s father, reported one missing last night.”
“We’ll add it to the list of charges when we nab this guy, which should be soon.” The detective gestured toward the empty trailer. “Especially if he’s on horseback. Cammie?”