“This will weaken him?”
“You bet, Mrs. J. Ol’ Clint Eberhart’s probably clutchin’ his gut right now and wonderin’ why he feels so galdern weak!”
Zipper tore apart the velvet cushion in the front pew with his teeth: It still had Spratling’s scent on it.
Judy slammed a statue through a stained-glass window. “You ever do any work, Davy?”
“Can’t, I reckon. But I’m full of good ideas, ain’t I?” A bell chimed in the distance. “They want me back, Mrs. J.”
“Tell me what I need to do.”
“Can’t do that, neither.”
“Really? Who writes all these rules?”
“Folks upstairs. Frustratin’, ain’t it?”
Zipper snarled.
“What do you two think you’re doing in here?”
Clint Eberhart grasped a marble pedestal and struggled to keep standing.
Judy looked at the statue in her hand. Looked at Eberhart. She slammed the statue against the hard edge of a pew.
“Hey! Lady! Easy!”
She banged it again. The blows struck Clint as if she were wielding a plaster voodoo doll.
“Put that thing down! Come on. Cut me some slack, doll.”
Judy turned to Davy. “Is he a ghost, too?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Judy swung the statue she was holding like a baseball bat at the knees of another statue. Eberhart crumpled to the floor.
“Stop! Ouch! That hurts!”
Judy hacked a cough. She was inhaling too much smoke. Currently, Judy and Zipper were the only two creatures in the room who actually needed to breathe. Therefore, they also needed to leave.
“Davy?” Judy peered through the haze. It stung her eyes. “We need to get out. Now.”
Davy didn’t answer.
He’d disappeared.
It was just Judy, the dog, and the demon squirming on the floor.
She stood over him. Raised her statue high.
“Where’s Zack?”
“Where you’ll never find him!”
“Where?”
Eberhart moaned.
“Come on, Mrs. J.!” It was Davy. Somehow, he had transported himself out of the chapel and into the library at the other end of the secret passageway. “You best get out before the fire gets you!”
Eberhart struggled to his feet. “Where’s your son?” he snarled. “On his way to hell!”
Judy turned. “Which way, Davy?”
The boy was gone. Again.
“Come on, Zipper! Run!”
They had at best a ten-step lead.
And no one left to help them.
Gerda Spratling was on her knees, ferociously praying to revive Eberhart’s wounded soul.
The baby kicked and screamed.
“Miss Spratling?” Willoughby held his head. “The baby?”
Miss Spratling kept mumbling prayers.
“They’re going to arrest you, too,” Zack said to Willoughby. He was chained to the pipe again. “Accessory to murder, I figure.”
“Be quiet!”
“They’ll probably give you one of those lethal-injection deals.”
“Miss Spratling?”
“You know how they do that? Well, they have this huge needle,” Zack said. “I hear it’s like three or four feet long.”
“Miss Spratling?”
“They stick that needle in your butt.”
“Miss Spratling!”
The baby screeched.
“And that needle’s full of rat poison.”
“Miss Spratling?”
The baby sent his bottle skidding across the floor and let loose a squeal. Willoughby lunged toward Spratling and shook her.
“Miss Spratling!”
“How dare you interrupt my prayers!”
“I can’t do this! I can’t!”
“Pray with me, Mr. Willoughby.” Her right hand disappeared under the folds of her gown.
“I don’t want to die from a lethal injection!” He shambled over to the pole, fumbled in his pocket for the keys.
“Rodman?”
The old chauffeur undid the lock behind Zack’s back.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“What I should have done ages ago: say no to one of you miserable Spratlings!”
“Mr. Willoughby? Are you forgetting certain documents I keep locked in Father’s safe?”
“I don’t give two hoots about it anymore! I’m old! I have no children! Who cares if you blackmail me?”
While the old folks argued, Zack slowly slid across the floor…easing over to…the baby…the portable car seat….
“Why, you ungrateful, insolent old man!”
Miss Spratling reared up. The knife blade came out from under her wedding gown and glinted over her head.
“Don’t do it!” yelled Zack. He grabbed the handle on the baby seat. “Leave Mr. Willoughby alone or I swear I’ll take this baby so far away, you and your boyfriend will never find him!”
“Hah! You wouldn’t get far! I’d catch you!”
“Really? And just how fast can you run in that wedding dress?”
The old lady slowly lowered the knife but kept it aimed at Mr. Willoughby’s heart. “Fine. We’ll simply wait for Clint to return. He’ll deal with you,” she sneered. “He’ll deal with you both!”
Judy and Zipper raced back into the mansion’s library.
Davy had disappeared again and so had Eberhart. But it seemed some other tormented spirit was in the room with them because Judy heard ghostly moaning from somewhere up near the ceiling.
Zipper ran over to the rolling ladder attached to the towering bookcases.
“Hello?” Judy called out. She saw the faint outline of a man standing near the top of the ladder. “Who are you?”
The man held a sputtering candle. He turned slowly and looked down.
Judy recognized the man because she had seen his face in the old newspaper clippings: Julius Spratling. Gerda’s dead father. He was dressed in a dark blue business suit. There was an anguished look on his waxy face.
He blew out the candle and something fluttered through the air: a glowing square of soft light, a phantom sheet of paper. It drifted down lazily like a tumbling leaf. When it finally hit the library floor, it bounced up half an inch and slid underneath one of the massive bookcases.
Judy hurried over to where the thin rectangle of light had disappeared. She bent down and saw an ancient binder. It was covered by almost an inch of dust.
Was it the report from the safe-deposit box?
She reached in. Grabbed the slender book. Read its cover.
The Greyhound Bus Incident
A Search for Justice
Yes! It was the same report. Only this wasn’t a carbon copy. This had to be the original Grandpa Jennings had presented to Julius Spratling on the night he committed suicide. The pages were yellowed. The plastic spine had faded. It had, apparently, been hidden under the bookcase for the past twenty-five years.
Judy slowly opened the booklet and the pages began to flick forward—all by themselves! The flipping paper came to a sudden stop when it reached a page where certain words, down near the bottom, seemed to glow with an eerie light.
Mr. Eberhart loved to flirt with thefactory girls, often inviting them to join him for makeout sessions in anabandoned machine shop behind the factory.
The machine shop. Behind the factory.
That’s where they took Zack!
“Come on, Zipper. We have to hurry!”
Judy looked up to thank Mr. Spratling.
She saw his ghostly body swinging at the noosed end of a tasseled rope.
Judy and Zipper raced out of the library and were blinded by a brilliant white light.
“Davy?”
Clint Eberhart stumbled into the dusty beam. “That hillbilly beaned me with his slingshot!”
While Eberhart rubbed his ear, Judy and Zipper took off.
They both knew the way to the front door because they had been up and down this corridor all night long. Now they needed to outrun the limping hellion and go rescue Zack at the abandoned Spratling Clockworks Factory.