She laughed as they jumped the cemetery fence together. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” They hung in air for a moment, triumphant as the little gold horse and rider atop an equestrian trophy, then they struck earth and she went spinning out of Gunsmoke’s head, giddily somersaulting to Mr. Irving’s side.
“What a ride!” she gasped.
“A heroic animal. Can he do the job?”
“Oh sure. I’ve taught him fetch and carry.”
Irving shrugged. “We will give it a go.”
Irving returned from the river with a load of water. Gunsmoke twitched at the approach of the white bag, raising his head and gritting his teeth.
“Easy, baby,” said Kate.
“I can bear it no farther,” said Irving, stopping at the foot of Eliza’s grave.
“Hold it near the ground, please.”
Kate flew in little circles, trying to beckon the horse. “Bring the bag here, baby. Come on. Come on.”
Gunsmoke gave a forceful snort.
“Fetch and carry, remember? You can do it.” Kate slipped inside Gunsmoke’s mind and took his mental reins. If an idea is like a spark in the mind, Kate’s little soul-light was an idea in Gunsmoke’s head, an idea that he should bend, should take the bag of water in his teeth, should pull it, drag it onto the grave of Eliza Merrick… and let go.
Water poured over the grave, washing it of salt.
“Good boy!” cried Kate.
“A most excellent camel,” said Irving. “It shall take a few more, I think.”
They repeated the process. Irving brought another bag, then another. Kate felt everything that Gunsmoke did. The flick of his ears, the sway of his neck, the swish of his tail. She felt his love of her. She fought the urge to go galloping again, to run run run and never look back…
On the seventh wash, a wind rose and a low rumbling sound broke over the valley. Gunsmoke balked. Kate lost the connection.
“Was that thunder?” she said. “Don’t tell me it was going to rain anyway?”
“We have broken her spell,” said Irving. “We best be gone.”
Thunder sounded again, louder.
“What have you done?” cried a voice. A ghost with half a head appeared at Kate’s elbow.
“She’ll blame us!” wailed another ghost, climbing up from the clay.
“Take hold of them!” cried a skeletal third. “Don’t let them go!”
Gunsmoke let out a rip of terror, turning a circle. A hundred spirits advanced on them. Thunder cracked again. They were surrounded.
The ghosts of Palmyra had risen.
Eddie dragged himself out of the water. His fury was intense. He’d tried over and over to cross the bridge—and had failed, over and over. The dark-haired chick had gone. He’d never reached her, and that pissed him off to no end.
Someone was dicking with Agathe’s prisoner. Eddie felt the commotion. He felt the spell break. The Horseman part of him knew, as if some ghost had come running with a dispatch from the front line. Good. He’d be glad to dole out some punishment right now. He turned his back on the broken bridge and summoned his hatchet. It flew into his hand. That trick, at least, still made him feel like a badass. He let himself go, let the anger swell inside him like a good pump. He let the Monster rise…
Damn right I’m a big man.
… and strode into the woods, toward the cemetery, leaving his fallen head to rot among the brambles and mushrooms of the Sleepy Hollow woods.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“The Porthole Room”
Jason stared at the little doggy door, hugging himself, apologizing to his body in advance for what he was about to put it through. He couldn’t defeat the trap door up top, so going down was his only option. He’d attempted to squeeze through that hole many times with no luck. He’d even slathered himself with oil from the tuna cans—had ended up scraped and fishy, but still trapped. Even as skinny as he was, his torso was too large in diameter. By about an inch.
But this was Day Ten; his time had run out. He had to escape now, before Hadewych returned.
Back in middle school, Jason had known a kid who could dislocate his own shoulder at will. Ven “Pop-Off” Popov could drop an elbow, wriggle, and the next thing you knew his right arm was out of joint and he was patting himself on his own back. Jason and his chubby friend Owen had considered this a real superpower, mysterious and cool. Now Jason wished he’d asked Ven how it was done. He had to pull the trick himself or die.
He tried to picture his shoulder joint—the humerus bone of the upper arm ending in a ball at the top, fitting snugly into its socket, surrounded by delicate nerves and all the little muscles he’d have to rip. He’d have to pop it off, as old Pop-Off had done. He searched his memories. Ven had dropped the elbow and twisted it downward, so that the ball would roll out and the arm bone would snap upward into the armpit. The kid swore it didn’t hurt much, but he’d already ripped the little muscles, long before, in some playground fall. Jason would be starting from scratch.
Jason cleared a runway in the third-floor bedroom and used the can opener to scrape a crude circle on the red brick wall. His target. He’d have to take a running leap at the wall, shoulder first. His biggest worry was finding the right angle. Well, the excruciating pain and finding the right angle.
He gritted his teeth and ran for the wall, right shoulder first.
Whump!
He winced, knees buckling. He sank onto the mattress, his left hand hugging his shoulder, his feet kicking the air. He knew immediately that he’d held back too much, had pulled his speed at the last instant. His shoulder joint was fine. He’d just bruised himself.
If you’re going to do this, just do it. Just pop your own arm off. How hard can it be? Ven flunked geometry!
Jason returned to the runway and threw himself at the target again, more violently than before.
Whump!!
This time he howled with pain. But when he rotated the shoulder, he found it was still in place. He hurt even worse yet had accomplished nothing.
He found himself thinking of a passage in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, about how you could fly if you learned to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Don’t think about the pain. Think of something else, anything else. Think of Kate, of Joey, of Eliza. He winced, remembering his grandmother’s ghost, in chains on the bridge. Think of everything that’s on the other side of that door. Freedom… Ice… Internet.
But I like my arm. I need my arm. I might want to hail a taxi someday.
Get out of this lighthouse and you can hail a hundred taxis. You can pay people to hail taxis. Stay here… and you’re dead.
That decided it.
I’m going to throw myself at that wall now. I’m not going to miss, but I am going to fly. This jailbird is getting out of here, even if it takes a busted wing.
He took a deep breath…
One. Two. Three.
He closed his eyes and ran for the wall as fast as he could.
Cr—ack!!!
Something in his right shoulder ripped—and the bones separated. Soft tissue tore, ligaments stretched. The pain was incredible.
But the arm stayed in its socket.
Jason screamed. He held his body together with his one uninjured arm. The pain radiated down his spine. His bicep spasmed, his back arched, and his ear involuntarily pressed to his shoulder. He sank to the floor and curled into a ball, which earned him another endless leg cramp. He lay on his side, struggling against agony and anger and fear. He didn’t have another attempt in him.
He’d failed.
He lashed out in anger, kicking the wall beneath the stairs. The framed embroidery fell and the glass broke. Jason touched his fingers to a shard, fighting some small voice that told him to cut his own wrists. Here. Now. To deny Hadewych the satisfaction. He lay on his back and studied the needlework. It bore a little picture of the lighthouse, jaunty above the Hudson. The tiny waves were nicely done, in turquoise and navy blue, with caps of white thread. The
embroidered signature read A.M. Agnes Moreland. The wife of the last lighthouse keeper. She’d been handy with a needle. One of the articles had mentioned that.
Jason pressed his glowing left palm to the stitching, just to be taken out of himself for a moment—to escape from the pain.
Agnes sits in the porthole room, needlework in hand. She is pretty, but wears no makeup. Her littlest boy lies sleeping in a daisy-painted cradle nearby, his diapered rear end higher than his head. The portholes are dark and starlit, but one round light shines on the floor like a disc of sunshine, waxing and waning, waxing and waning. Agnes is using the light to work by, while her baby sleeps. She sighs, searches a quilted bag by the chair, and pulls out a squat bottle of crème de menthe. She takes a surreptitious swallow straight from the neck.
The vision broke. Jason’s pain claimed his attention again, but it had grown bearable. He wished he had some booze himself, to dull his throbbing nerves. He threw the rag aside and stared at his target on the wall. Maybe he could try it once more. He had nothing else to do. No other ideas. He’d just keep trying until—
He frowned. Something wasn’t right. Something about that vision wasn’t right. He didn’t know what, though. Something about… dawn. The sun. The light.
He pulled himself to his feet and limped upstairs to the porthole room.
Where had the light been coming from?
It had been night in the vision, and the portholes had been dark. Even if the lantern was shining, up top, the light wouldn’t be coming in through the portholes because of the balconies just above, which shaded them. So…
Jason searched the ceiling for some answer.
There.
The trap door was set in the very center. It was locked and he had no key that fit it. The boards were uniformly painted with a thick coat of industrial grey, covering every rivet and nail head. But he could make out a single round indentation two feet from the trap.
He fetched Hadewych’s little brass key and climbed the spiral staircase, still clutching his sore arm. Using the key, he scraped away the paint. It stretched and tore like the shedding skin of a corpse. Beneath it lay a circle of glass. A porthole in the ceiling? Why have a porthole in the ceiling?
The answer came at once.
Who wants to climb all these stairs? If you’re the lighthouse keeper, you have to be able to tell whether the light’s working, but you don’t want it always shining in. That’s why the catwalk runs around the light—to shade the windows. But you can’t climb up every five seconds to check. With this little porthole you could tell at a glance that everything was in order.
He’d solved that mystery, but did the answer help him any?
A possibility occurred to him. He’d considered this once before, but had written it off as impracticable. If the windows were glass, then—in theory, at least—his Gift should be able to turn them into sand. He’d previously abandoned the notion because he was up too high and the portholes were too small. He wouldn’t be heard if he called for help through them—not over the constant crashing waves below—and he couldn’t get out that way, so what was the point? He’d just end up with more cold air getting in at night. But this was different. If he could turn this little circle of glass into sand and reach through… yes, he’d be able to reach the trap door lock from the other side, maybe open the bolt and escape, get to the bell outside on the fifth-floor catwalk and call for help.
He was tempted to try it immediately, but he couldn’t afford a screw-up. He’d only get one chance. He had to practice first. He climbed down, chose a porthole in the wall—the one facing the Tappan Zee Bridge—and pressed a hand to it.
Come on…
His Gift engaged and his palm flashed, but the porthole was unchanged. Well. It was a little cleaner, the surface a little smoother.
You’re not going back far enough. This lighthouse was built… when? A hundred and fifty years ago? You need to dig deep here, Crane.
Jason went to the next porthole—the one facing Nyack. He pressed a palm to the glass and imagined it transforming… melting…
His palm flashed.
Jason cried out and snatched his hand away, as if he’d touched a hot stove. His palm was burned. The porthole glass glowed red. The distant streetlights of Nyack bubbled and distorted. The glass sagged, dripping, cooling. Jason poked it with a fingertip, leaving an indentation. He’d almost taken it back far enough. To the day it was made. He had to take it further. He went to the next porthole, the one that faced Kingsland Point Park.
See that? See the little beach there? That’s what I need. Think sand. Sand. Sand. Sand. Come on. Do it. Do it. Come on!
Flash!
A quarter inch of glass transformed into crystalline grains that fell away.
Jason grinned.
The Force is strong with this one.
The glass looked to be about six inches thick though. He needed to do better. He did his trick on the other windows, achieving a greater transformation, changing over half the glass to sand. But in each case the remaining glass still wasn’t thin enough to punch through. He kept trying, doing a little better each time.
Then he ran out of portholes.
He’d failed at every attempt, but he’d come close. He was ready as he’d ever be. He climbed the spiral stair, feeling like he was going to the gallows. If he screwed this up he’d be back to Plan A, and his shoulder dreaded his next headlong dash at the brick.
He took up his key again and cleaned the porthole thoroughly. He pressed his palm to the glass.
Take it back… come on… sand… sand…
Flash!
A glob of blistering hot grease flared down his forearm, scalding his skin, steaming and noxious. He wiped it away frantically with the end of his shirt. What the hell had happened?
Oh.
The porthole in the ceiling had been plastic, not glass. He’d turned the damn thing back into oil. He couldn’t help but laugh, despite the pain. At least he’d broken through. Now to see if he could open the lock. He leaned precariously over the staircase rail, sticking one leg through the twisted metal to brace himself. He stuck his arm through the hole, feeling around. His fingers brushed the bolt. He almost had it. But his fingers were slippery. He went up on his toes. Reach… reach…
He climbed up on the railing, straining, and got his hand around the bolt. He twisted it, the trap popped open…
…and knocked him over the rail.
The floor flew up at him, fast. He didn’t miss it and he couldn’t fly.
Crack!
His howls were deafening. Above him, the trap door dangled open, but he was too busy screaming to care.
He’d hit at the perfect angle.
And had dislocated his shoulder.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“The Battle of Gory Brook”
Thunder rolled through the attic. Agathe looked up from her grimoire and slipped it into a pocket. She left her rocker and studied the night sky. Someone had broken a spell of hers, and now other spells were failing. She whispered, and a garish purple firefly appeared at her side. She listened to its account.
“So,” Agathe said. “Little Kate is making mischief again. I want her. I will lock her away myself in an iron box. Go.”
The firefly winked out. Lightning flashed again outside, and, like a first fallen tear, a single raindrop snaked down the glass. Agathe scowled, but she was not concerned. She had thought to hold the rain back longer, so as to create a greater glut, but three days was enough time to complete her work and be ready.
She took the little anichitis from her pocket and caressed it.
“Soon,” she whispered.
“Get away from us!” cried Kate, spinning and pinwheeling around headstones.
An emaciated ghost tried to snatch her from the air. “She’ll hurt us if we let you go.”
A crowd of ghosts rose. Irving evaded their grasp. He was stronger than any other ghost, but they were many. Gunsmoke reared, terrified. Kate flew to
his side to comfort him.
“He’s coming!” Irving shouted. “We have to go!”
“I can’t leave Gunsmoke!”
“Miss Kate! Hurry! Now!”
Lightning flared above the graves. A tree burst into flame. The light of it flared brightly. Kate lost sight of Irving. She could see no other ghosts, only the long shadows of headstones and the panicking rain-slicked Gunsmoke. A ghost had tied him to the birch tree. He reared, unable to run. Kate couldn’t untie him.
“It’ll be okay, baby. It’ll be okay.”
A flash of lightning revealed a figure climbing over the chain link fence from the aqueduct trail. A human shape with no head. It swung itself over and landed firmly on the slope above. It brandished its hatchet as it marched down to her.
Kate tugged at the reins, trying desperately to free Gunsmoke.
The Horseman reached for her, but she slipped through his fingers. She spun among the graves, helplessly, like a spark in a whirlwind.
Zef picked up a trash bag in the kitchen. A square of leaf-patterned linoleum came up with it, exposing concrete and glue beneath. He kept working, carrying bags to the entrance hall.
He cracked the door. “Ready to take these out to the curb?”
Hadewych balked and closed it. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
SLEEPY HOLLOW: General of the Dead (Jason Crane Book 3) Page 36