SLEEPY HOLLOW: General of the Dead (Jason Crane Book 3)

by Gleaves, Richard

  I could never go home. I would be a figure of fun, forever—the girl with the bug in her bonnet. Gerard Beekman had seen! That horrid Cornelia had seen! They had laughed together over it! I wept, adding my tears to the Pocantico, and perhaps they swirl in the millpond to this day.

  I rose, determined never to show my face in Tarrytown again, and ran like a mad thing into the haunted woods.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  “Agathe’s Tale ~ Part Two”

  May 1st, 1849

  I recognized the signs of an Indian trail—white cuts in the bark of trees to show the route. I would live with the Indians! I would be a squaw. I would take a red-skinned husband and have his babies and I would never spin or do embroidery. But the trail abandoned me and I became lost. Sweat covered my face, drawing a cloud of biting insects. I fell to my knees in a meadow white with bridal flowers, all ghostly in the dim light. I undid my braids and let my hair fall to my shoulders. Yes. I would live in the wild. I would hunt my leeches in a new pond and try to forget my shame. I tied my hair with a stem of grass, stood, and turned a circle. From which direction had I entered the meadow? Fallen trees stalked me, alien shapes like praying mantises, big as horses. I chose a gap in the thicket and pressed onward, listening for the river. I passed an evil-looking clearing where a single white tree stood, spectral, with knothole-eyes, the hitching post for a nightmare. I felt its gaze upon me. I had stumbled into the lair of ghosts and they would catch me here, a little girl alone…

  But was I alone? Something blinked from the brush. Someone coughed. I heard steps, a trickle of rocks disturbed. My own breathing grew to a terrible volume. The whine of insects maddened me. I slapped myself as I stumbled through the dark. Thorns clutched at my stockings. I came to a sudden drop and would have fallen to my death had I not caught a nearby branch. A stone as big as my head tumbled into the gully yet made no sound, as if it fell endlessly.

  I picked my way downhill and found a stream, glossy and stagnant and full of mud, sluggish as the trickle that feeds the bleeding bowl. It was the stream we now call the Gory Brook, the very same that flows past Spook Rock. I felt I must cross it. To my young mind, the brook was a boundary between one life and the next. I could turn back and find my old home, or cross over and find a new.

  I chose to cross.

  I found a log and climbed onto it, stitching the trunk with my feet, trying not to pitch over into the drink. I lost my balance and took hold of an upturned branch, but the brittle wood couldn’t support me. It snapped. The trunk shed bark beneath my shoe. I fell over with a cry of terror and landed in the mud with a slap. I felt things wriggling on me. Had I found leeches? I cupped one and held it to the moonlight. Just a tadpole, fat as a rotted crabapple. I staggered to the far bank, pulled myself up, and fell into a soft thicket. I was soaked through, face flushed, and in tears again.

  An aroma broke around me, more intense than all the orchards in the world, than all the flowers along the post road, a potpourri of cinnamon and lavender and coriander, of belladonna, meadowsweet, spearmint, sage and thyme and every spicy fragrance one can imagine. I breathed it in, surrendering myself to it, but I was overheated and my heart beat wildly from my fall. I leaned down to cup a double handful of the Gory Brook. and raised it to my mouth.

  “No! No drink!”

  A cane broke through the weeds, striking my shoulder and knocking me onto my side. I spilled the water.

  “No drink. Not good. Not for you.”

  The accent was German. A face swam through the gloom. For a moment, I thought I’d found Old Willow again, that ghost of the spinning wheel with the open-grave eyes, but this was a living woman, with chicken-bone arms and liver spots and a shawl like the wings of a bat.

  “I’m thirsty,” I said, defiance overcoming my fear. I scooped water from the brook and guzzled it down.

  “Idiot!” She peered down her warty nose, raised a hand, and slapped my face.

  I would have run, screamed at her, slapped her myself, but an extraordinary thing happened. A tiny winking light appeared, then another, and another. They fell from the trees, they rose from the earth, they slipped through the weeds. They kissed the flowers, my arms, my eyelids: fireflies, everywhere, circling me, as stars circle the earth, as drones circle their queen.

  The old woman looked at me with an expression of wonder.

  “Drink,” she said, gently.

  I bent and took another swallow of water. The fireflies shone ever more brightly, wreathing my shoulders and kissing my brow.

  The old woman grinned, as a skull might grin.

  “Come,” she barked, and grabbed my arm.

  May 4th, 1849

  She dragged me from her herb garden and into her hovel, a plain hut of fieldstones and mud, with a thatched roof and a chimney belching smoke. I dimly perceived a sleeping-nest in one dark corner. Fetishes of sticks and leaves and animal bones hung from above. I’d heard of an old woman who lived in the wood. Mother Hulda, they called her. Every November, when the men butchered, she’d buy the cheapest cuts: the ears and nostrils and hooves and the fat bags of the udders. I would be shut in a cage until she deigned to eat me, for was I not a perfect little Gretel? Was my brother not a Hans? I’d found the gingerbread house, I’d dropped no breadcrumbs, and Hulda would pick her teeth with my bones.

  She dragged me to the glowing hearth, as if to cook me, holding tight to my wrist.

  “You are witch,” she said.

  “I’m no witch.”

  She glared at me. “You. Are. Witch.” She patted her chest. “I am witch, too.” Her claw traced a path from her heart to mine, back and forth. Her face softened. “We sisters.” She waited until I had calmed, until I had decided that she would not eat me after all. She let go of my hands and grinned. “Mother Hulda,” she said, twirling the ribbon of her bonnet.

  “Agathe Van Ripper.”

  She bowed, then swung a kettle over the blaze. “You hungry? Yes?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, for I was empty inside.

  “We sisters,” she repeated, more firmly.

  She cooked broth and root vegetables: a simple stew, but full of exotic herbs. When I had finished, she took my bowl, spit on the hem of her shawl, and cleaned my cheeks, as my mother might have. I confess I grew tired and fell asleep by the fire. Perhaps her soup contained some potion to bewitch me. I do not know, but my next memory is of her cackling face, so much more hideous by the light of dawn.

  “Come!” she cried again, and dragged me from the hut.

  We ascended a little hill, up a near-invisible path hidden by bundles of fallen branches that looked like bonfires waiting for witches to burn. We passed through a copse of birch and came to a clearing. An immense rock sat at the center, ringed by magnificent old trees. I eyed it dubiously. Tufts of lichen grew on one side, black despite the early light, like a leprous growth across the boulder’s cheek.

  “Touch,” said Mother Hulda, pointing.

  “Why?”

  “Test.”

  I shook my head, refusing. She grabbed my hand and held it to the stone. The stone burned me as a stove might. It burned me as those bonfires below would burn. It burned me, for this was Spook Rock, and it knew a witch.

  “Please! Please!” I screamed. “It hurts!”

  “You feel, yes?”

  “Yes! Yes! I’m burning! Oh, how I burn!”

  She released me and gave a small bow. “You Deep Witch. With great magic. I teach you, yes? Yes, sister?”

  I had seen and heard enough. Terror took my heart. She was a foul creature, an unholy thing that lurked in the wood. How dare she call me sister? She was no sister of mine! I had no sister. I had a little brother. I had a mother. I had a father. I wanted them desperately.

  I fled.

  “Deep Witch!” she called after. “You tell, they die!”

  I stumbled down the hill, leapt the brook, and scrambled up the other side, desperate to get away.

  “You tell of me, you die!”

/>   I tore through the woods, found the river, and ran for home.

  When I staggered back across my own threshold, dirty and scratched, my mother welcomed me with hugs and reprimands. My brother welcomed me with a passable cicada imitation. My father wanted to hear of the haunted woods and whether I’d seen any of the wonders that surely lurked there.

  But I did not tell.

  June 11th, 1849

  I return to my diary after the absence of a month, and now I must find the thread again. I’ve been overzealous, drawing far too much ink, and I fainted moments after I completed the previous entry. Bettany found me on the attic floor. Thank God I did not crack my father’s bowl. I must be more brief, else I shall reminisce myself into anemia.

  I had almost forgotten my adventure in the forest, as one forgets an odd and inexplicable dream, when Mother Hulda searched me out. She came to my father’s shop, offering to sell him medicinal herbs. She left a sample, free of charge. We did not speak, but she winked at me on her way out. The remedies proved miraculous, curing toothaches and back pain better than all the leeches in Christendom. My father waited impatiently for her next visit, for word had spread that Daniel Van Ripper could cure anything. Hulda offered to supply her herbs at a fraction of their worth, if only my father would send “das kleine Mädchen Agathe” to fetch them once a week, as Hulda was old and could not journey far. My parents agreed. They did not know Hulda lived in the woods and I did not tell them, for curiosity had grown in me, now that my fear had subsided.

  Once a week, I would arrive at her hut, snatch the bundle of herbs from her stoop, and hurry back. Over time, I memorized the path and the woods grew friendlier. I trailed fireflies whenever I walked there, and could always find my way by their glow. I grew to love the forest as I loved my slough.

  One day the witch sang from the hut, “Kommen und essen, meine Schwester-Hexe. Come and eat, my sister-witch,” and I entered. What was the harm? Mother Hulda seemed kind enough, if odd and fierce.

  We learned to communicate. Her fractured Dutch made a sort of music to me—a soft, lulling music, bringing me into her coven and Sabbat-dance. Her hovel stood at the source of the Hollow’s bewitchment. Could I not feel it? I could—a trickle, from secret sources, trembling the air. She’d built her hut near the magic brook, “Die Blut-Wasser,” the Blood-Water, and grew herbs on its bank, so as to increase their potency. The water did likewise to me when I drank of it. It increased my potency, so that I attracted spirits. This, she said, proved my nature. Spook Rock had given Hulda all the confirmation she needed. “Die Zauberstein,” the Spellstone, had warmed to me. I was a witch, just as she was. I could perform no magic, not yet—I was still a child—but magic was in me and I could master “das Hexenwerk” if I tried.

  From whence sprang such potential? Hulda remembered a Dutch sorceress, Justine Van Ripper, chased from New Amsterdam before 1700. I knew of no such kin, but Hulda believed me descended from that famous line, the first in the new world.

  “Once and ago,” Hulda said, “land full of witches. Witches in the sky. In the trees. Witches down the well. Justine a great witch. Many herbs. Many friends. One day, curse fall. Everyone die, everyone who believe in Hexe. No one can say the reason. This 1692. Hidden the knowledge is. The Appointed hide it. Ptu.” She spat on the name. “A Great Curse cast in Salem that year. Legion, she cast curse to kill the day-world. In New Amsterdam they not know. Only see. Everyone die. What for? They blame Justine. Chased her off. She come here, I think. Hide from witch-hunters. You her blood.”

  I asked my father if he knew any Van Ripper ancestor named Justine, but he knew nothing of his family’s history, only that they had been in Tarrytown for several generations. My mother was a Wildey, they who namesaked the swamp. Possibly Hulda was correct. She promised my magic would come, once I was a woman.

  June 12th, 1849

  My apprenticeship consisted of cleaning the hut, tending Hulda’s kettle, and rubbing her feet. She kept a book of spells, but never read it in my presence. She kept it under the hearthstone. Sometimes I saw splashes of red on the cinders. From cooking, I told myself. She copied spells for me on slips of paper and I memorized them. I sat in the woods, in clover, under a bower of vines like veins through the twilight sky, squinting until my eyes lost the letters. I chose that one white tree, that nightmare-hitch, and hid my spells in its knothole eyes. And soon, though rains blurred the words, I could recite those spells by heart. I still can. Spells to bind and beckon, spells to gather and purge and bewitch.

  (There would be little point in transcribing my spells for you here, Dylan. You are no witch, not of the old sort. They would not work for you. But I have Mother Hulda’s grimoire, hidden under these floorboards. Search it out: my gift to some future Van Ripper Witchling.)

  I cannot say by what steps I came to believe Hulda’s seductive promises of power, but I do know the moment when I chose to be a witch. Irrevocably, and with my whole heart.

  On the Sunday that Cornelia Van Cortland became Cornelia Beekman, the newly wedded pair made their first public appearance at church—their “coming out,” as was the custom—so that our poor congregation could thoroughly enjoy the spectacle of her bridal finery. The pair arrived late, with the whole bridal party in wedding array. Cornelia wore fawn-colored silk over a light blue damask petticoat. Gerard wore a waistcoat of the same, and a long coat of white broadcloth.

  After services, the Beekmans graciously shared the leftovers of their wedding feast, serving chicken and ale to the congregation, outside among the graves of the Old Burying Ground. The day was pleasant and the grass sweet. The bridesmaids fluttered about, in high-heeled scarlet shoes, with rolled and powdered wigs incompetently set, wooing the young friends of the bridegroom, resplendent in their gay coats and cocked hats. The tenant famers and peasant wives stood all hunched about, licking their fingers and making little bows of deference. Cornelia held a bouquet of orange blossoms to her cheek, and everyone agreed that she was the most beautiful young lady in all creation, married to the most good-natured and remarkable man.

  “That will be you, someday,” my mother whispered.

  The sun kissed Gerard’s forehead as he reached into his purse and showered the graveyard with coins. All my neighbors fell to their knees at the couple’s feet, scrabbling for pennies. My mother and father, my brother, Mr. Couenhoven, Baltus and Eleanor Van Tassel, Glode Requa, Jacob Paulding, Abraham Martling, all Tarrytown knelt to prospect the weeds! Only I remained unbent. I stood, staring daggers into Cornelia, as she accepted a surreptitious kiss from her beautiful husband. Oh, that kiss in the graveyard. A perfect kiss of love and devotion and tribute.

  She noticed my expression of pain and mistook it for disappointment.

  “Did you not get a penny, dear?” she said, smiling. “Here you go.”

  She threw her bouquet of orange blossoms to me. I caught it, and gave her a tiny bow. Yes, I thought, that would be me someday. I crushed the bouquet to my heart and swore my oath. Cornelia would not win. She was no better than I. I was special too. I wore no emeralds, I wore no silk, but I trailed fireflies. I deserved such a perfect kiss. I deserved such a perfect man. And if I could not win a God by grace…

  … I would seize one by sorcery.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  “Agathe’s Tale ~ Part Three”

  June 20th, 1849

  There were few men to choose from. I was personally close to only one, and he was unsuitable. Baltus Van Tassel knew nothing of my apprenticeship in the woods. He remained a friend as always, my anchor to the world of my birth. In his company, I forgot my hunger for magic. We laughed together. We told ghost stories. We stole loaves of bread and guzzled sweet cream. We climbed the hanging tree and sat hidden in the whitewood, twitching the nooses when travelers passed, to startle them. Yet, as we grew older, Baltus became more hesitant in my presence until, one day, behind the tavern, I asked him if I had done something wrong. He opened a barrel, took a fortifying draught of ale, seized my wrist
, and kissed me.

  I pushed him away, so that he fell back, wet his bottom in the barrel, and couldn’t get out. I laughed and told him, “You’re too fat for me. You must never kiss me again.” I left him there, stuck, pitching about and calling for help. I regretted my words, but I‘d sworn to love no less than a god. I felt deeply offended that my first kiss had been so much less than that perfect communion I had witnessed in the graveyard. I could never love a fat wagon-master, despite his father’s wealth.

  Baltus avoided me all that spring, though I left a jar of hair pomade with Eleanor, as apology. My mother’s pomades were as tasty as actual marmalade.

  My mother had always insisted I marry a strong man. She’d married a weakling and forever regretted it. She’d become the stereotypical Dutch wife, eternally henpecking, nagging Papa for every chore, dragging him to every decision, pinching his pennies and doing his thinking. To marry a weak man, she muttered, was as unwise as to enter a three-legged race tied to a cripple. You can still cross the finish line, but you get a fearsome crick in your side.

  “Your father’s weakness will bring our family to ruin!” she cried, and often.

  I took her words to heart. I was sixteen and romantic. Passions raged in me. I hid behind the yellow rocks and watched the boys swim, introducing myself to the peculiarities of the male form. But I saw no Gerard Beekman there. Nor did I see his likeness among the sons of the tenant farms. However, in that spring of 1776, my prospects improved, for the roads became bright with the uniforms of soldiers.

  I’d paid little attention to the mutterings of my neighbors. They spoke incessantly of our Continental Congress in Philadelphia and of the rebellion in Boston against our British king. Those events seemed far away and I was engrossed in my study of witchcraft. The soldiers intrigued me though, so I asked what the fuss was about. (My mother insisted I never speak to men on the road, so of course I did.) The British King had responded to the American insurrection by sending a fleet, under the command of Admiral Howe, to siege the Massachusetts port of Boston. Howe’s brother, General Sir William Howe, commanded the ground forces of the King. American troops had inflicted heavy casualties upon the British at Bunker Hill, which overlooked the Boston harbor. Continental Army Colonel Henry Knox dragged cannon down from Fort Ticonderoga and that, plus a bitter snow, had driven the British to abandon their blockade and sail away. The soldiers I met were full of fire, for they believed the Boston stalemate had proved their war could be won. They had come to enlist soldiers for the Continental army, establishing a recruitment center at the tavern.