“Yeah, boss?”
“Impound this vehicle and trailer. Haul them over to the crime lab.”
“On it.”
While the trooper named Cammie radioed for a tow truck, another pair of state police officers came hiking out of the woods.
“Boss?” one of them called out to the lead detective.
“What’ve you got, MacDonald?”
“This kid Ickes is good.”
“How so?”
“We tracked the horse hooves down to a creek.”
“Don’t tell me: He took the horse into the water?”
“Exactly. We don’t know which way he went. Plus, to the south, the creek splits. So …”
“Put out an all-points bulletin. I want this Norman’s photograph on the eleven o’clock news. I want his description—and the horse’s—on the radio. I want every law-abiding citizen in the state of Connecticut looking for Norman Ickes, the Hardware Clerk Crook!”
The three aunts tightened their circle around Aunt Francine.
The cats circling the aunts’ ankles hissed, their tiny mouths opening wide to expose needle-sharp fangs.
“Show the dybbuk its false reflection,” said Hannah.
The three sisters slowly brought silvery signal mirrors, the kind hikers pack in survival kits, up to their eyes. Zack could see Aunt Francine’s face flickering in their flat and shiny surfaces.
She suddenly looked totally paralyzed.
Zack moved closer to Judy.
“She wants to hurt me,” he whispered.
“Not to worry, Zack, dear,” Aunt Ginny declared from the porch. “This dybbuk shall soon depart.”
Aunt Sophie tossed a glittering handful of sparkling powder over Aunt Francine’s head.
“Now, if we were ghosts more powerful than the spirit currently possessing the body,” explained Aunt Ginny, “we could simply shove the weaker soul out and replace it with one of our own.”
“But since we’re all alive,” said Aunt Sophie, “we must perform an exorcism.”
Exorcism? Zack gulped. He had seen that movie on DVD.
“Typically,” decreed Aunt Hannah, “this rite is performed by a rabbi and a cohort of ten.”
“However,” said Aunt Ginny, “we three have streamlined the ceremony to its essence.”
“You must have three,” said Aunt Hannah.
“Oh, yes,” added Aunt Sophie. “Three is the absolute, bare minimum.”
Pyewacket, Mister Cookiepants, and Mystic yowled.
“It is time to begin!” said Aunt Hannah.
Aunt Ginny cleared her throat and started to chant: “We three declare it so, the uninvited visitor must now go!”
“Stop!” shrieked the dybbuk. “You stop that this instant!”
Aunt Francine remained frozen in the center of the circle, her arms stubbornly stiff. She couldn’t claw but she sure could shriek.
“I want Zack! Stop this foolishness immediately!”
His three great-aunts would not listen to her pleas. They reached out for each other’s hands and, swaying slightly side to side, continued their eerie incantation:
“Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d!”
The black cat in the pack howled loudly.
Zack and Judy stood mesmerized, watching the three women fearlessly circling the snarling demon.
“Round the dybbuk now we go;
Leave this body by the toe.
Spirit, under cold stone lie;
You have had your chance to die.”
Aunt Sophie tossed more sparkling powder up into the air.
“Eye of newt and hoof of cow,
Leave this body, leave it now!”
Now Aunt Ginny pulled out a tin party horn, the kind people blow on New Year’s Eve.
“In the traditional dybbuk exorcism ritual,” she said over her shoulder, “the rabbi would now blow certain strident notes on the shofar, a ram’s horn used in Jewish religious ceremonies, to shake loose the soul possessing the body.”
“We, however,” said Hannah, “have found that any jarring horn will suffice.”
“The more sour the notes, the better,” added Sophie. “Virginia?”
Aunt Ginny brought the party horn up to her lips and blew a jangled jumble of clashing trumpet honks that sounded like monkey squeals and donkey bleats.
Aunt Francine started to quiver.
And shimmy.
Her body slumped to the floor.
A purple mist seeped up out of her crumpled form.
The violet cloud quickly took shape.
Zack’s dead mother, her head bald, her body swallowed up by a hospital gown, her eyes nearly popping out of her skull, stood on the porch, staring down at him.
Zack wasn’t sure, but it looked like she might be crying.
Her son had grown so much.
“Zachary?” She tried to smile. It wasn’t easy. She hadn’t done much smiling when she was alive, something she sorely regretted now that she was dead.
“Why did you possess your sister?” asked the woman she recognized as George’s aunt Hannah.
“To reach Zack.”
“Why?”
“I’m his mother. I know things other spirits cannot!”
“Such as?”
“Grave dangers lie ahead.”
“Very well,” said Hannah. “Zachary has heard your warning. You may now depart.”
Aunt Hannah and her two sisters lit some sort of white torches.
Sage!
Susan Potter froze. She couldn’t budge. Could barely speak.
“No … the … Icklebys,” she said, choking.
“Zack knows of the Icklebys,” said George’s aunt Hannah. “You may now depart.”
“Zack?” she pleaded. “I’m … different. I … made … mistakes. Need … to … make … amends!”
Her son hid behind the woman who had taken her place. The stepmother.
“It is time for you to leave here, Susan Potter,” George’s three aunts chanted. “All is well. There is nothing here for you now.”
“Zack …”
“All is well. There is nothing here for you now.”
“Wait. Zack? Nine-fifty-two.”
Thunder cracked. She wasn’t allowed to tell him that. It was against the rules.
“Nine-fifty-two!”
Another explosion of heavenly anger. She didn’t care.
The stench of the burning sage grew stronger. She could feel herself starting to slip away.
“It is time for you to leave,” the aunts chanted again. “All is well. There is nothing here for you now.”
“No. Please.”
“Go!” she heard Zack shout. “You heard them: There is nothing here for you. Nothing at all! Go and never come back!”
“Zack?” she railed against the coming darkness. “I’m sorry! Nine-fifty-two!”
She had no way of knowing if Zack heard her.
She was alone in the blackness again, doomed to drift once more in the bottomless abyss of her own creation.
Because in death there was no way for Susan Potter Jennings to make right all that in life she had done wrong.
The raven proved an excellent guide, leading horse and rider through the shallows of the Pattakonck River until they came upon a dilapidated boathouse.
Water lapped at the piers of its rotted dock. Barnabas tugged the reins and urged Satan to climb the muddy banks of the river. The hoofprints were the first they had made in miles.
The police searching for Norman Ickes would not be able to track Jack the Lantern.
“Thank you, trusted eyes of the sky,” Barnabas said to the bird as it lighted upon his elevated arm. “We need now a stable. Somewhere for Satan to rest this night.”
The bird fluttered off its perch and flew up a weed-choked pathway to a dark, deserted mansion. Barnabas snicked his tongue and Satan clip-clopped up the trail of flagstones, following where the bird led.