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

by Gleaves, Richard

  “The High Priestess,” said Zef, “is the card of a witch, a sorceress.”

  “Valerie,” said Jason. “I met them both on my first day.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Zef. “These are obstacles, right? I think it represents… someone darker.”

  “Agathe. When I let her out of the cellar.” Jason thought of the veiled front window of 417 Gory Brook, like a wild and evil eye. I’m watching you, boy…

  “Bingo. So there’s two Van Brunts.”

  Joey smiled mischievously. He raised a finger. “Question. Why do the pillars read ‘B.J.’?”

  Valerie scowled. “It’s from the—Temple of Solomon. Boaz, the black pillar of strength, and Jachin, the white pillar of mercy. It’s very very holy.”

  Joey retreated. “Can’t blame a boy for asking.”

  “Can we get on with it?” said Kate.

  Zef tapped each of the next three.

  “The Empress, the Emperor, and the Hierophant reversed.”

  “Just tell me,” said Jason.

  “Katrina, Brom, and Dylan.”

  “The quarry king and queen. Okay. I see that. Why is the Hierophant upside down?”

  “That’s how he appeared in all the readings. Right-side up, he’s like the Pope, the seeker of holy knowledge. Upside down…”

  “The seeker of evil knowledge.” Jason was getting the hang of it. “Dylan. Definitely. So the Fool meets the five Van Brunts. I met Hadewych, released Agathe, and got involved in the Project to open the tomb, which brought me to Katrina, Brom, and Dylan.”

  “It’s in chronological order!” gasped Joey. “What’s next? Turn a card. Turn a card.”

  “Next, you met… me and Kate.” Zef dealt card number six. The Lovers. Two figures, like Adam and Eve, naked in the garden. An angel spread its wings above, and a serpent throttled the tree of knowledge.

  “Wait,” said Joey. “Jason met me first! In the cemetery! At the Van Brunt tomb. Where am I?”

  “What do you expect?” said Jason. “A gravedigger card? Carrying a weed-whacker?”

  “Maybe. Why do I get left out?” Joey actually looked hurt.

  “Because you were never an obstacle,” said Zef. “I was. For way too long.” He looked at Jason. “I hope we’re cool now?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Jason muttered. He was distracted. He didn’t think the Lovers represented Zef and Kate at all. It was himself and Kate, their meeting at the Spirit Dance. He glanced at Kate. She looked at him wistfully but turned back to Zef.

  “Maybe you and Joey are the Lovers,” she said. “Go on.”

  “The Fool meets the Van Brunts,” said Zef. “Then the Lovers—in whatever combination. Then this happens.”

  He dealt card number seven.

  “The Chariot represents… rushing into something you shouldn’t. Being reckless.”

  “The Project,” Jason whispered. “The exhumation.”

  “I think so. And that mistake led to led to…”

  “Eliza’s death.” Jason inhaled, steeling himself. “Is Death number eight?”

  Zef dealt the next card. Number eight was Strength. A woman taming a lion.

  He squeezed Jason’s shoulder. “That was a hard time, right?”

  Jason thought of Halloween night, of his dark moment at the bottom of a freshly dug grave, pulling a length of muddy Astroturf over his head, wanting to die, wanting to go to her, to give up, to be with his parents. Eliza had given him strength when he needed it most. The strength to climb out of his self-pity and fight his way back to life. “I’ve seen enough.” He backed away from the piano. “What’s the point? I bet you could do a reading like this for anybody, and find meanings to match every card. It’s like… horoscopes. This isn’t predestination. We’re just reading shit into these.”

  “If you say so,” said Zef.

  He threw down card number nine. The Hermit. An old man carried a lantern aloft, searching.

  “Remember when you moved out to the RV, Hermit?”

  Valerie leaned forward. “And when you were searching—for the Horseman’s Treasure?”

  “Holy shit,” said Joey. “He’s even got a lantern.”

  “Still not convinced,” said Jason.

  “How about this?” said Zef. He dealt another. Card number ten. The Wheel of Fortune. “I seem to remember you came into some money right about then.”

  “No way,” said Jason. “That can’t be… the Legacy?”

  “And didn’t you have some legal problems?”

  Card number eleven was Justice. A judge presiding with his sword raised high.

  “The guardianship hearings?” said Jason, bewildered. “Piebald? My community service?”

  “You still think I’m imagining things? This next one I don’t get. Maybe it means something to you?”

  Card number twelve was the Hanged Man.

  Jason and Kate gasped simultaneously.

  “Remember, Jason?” said Valerie. “Tell them about the—man in the woods.”

  Jason and Kate held hands. Now he was scared. Kate was too. She squeezed his fingers for dear life. This was Black Friday, last November. The night of their horrors in the stable. This was the corpse in the tree, the man with yellow shoes—just like on the card—hung upside down to bleed into Gory Brook.

  Kate spoke first. “We saw him. He was hanging, just like that. The Horseman broke his corpse into pieces and made a horse from it. What the hell is going on here?”

  “Valerie,” Jason whispered, “what does the Hanged Man symbolize? You told me on Christmas Eve.”

  “It’s the card of—helplessness. Of surrender.”

  Ergeben, Jason thought. “Keep going. Let’s see them all.”

  “How about this guy?” said Zef. “Look familiar?”

  Card thirteen was Death. A skeleton in black armor rode a white horse, trampling the innocent beneath its hooves.

  Joey let out a squeak. “It’s the Horseman.”

  “It’s the Horseman,” said Kate, really hurting Jason’s hand now.

  “That card came up—at homecoming, too,” said Valerie.

  “Okay,” said Jason. “It’s the Horseman. It’s the stables, and Stone Barns, and… that attack on Sleepy Hollow Manor. How is this helping us? How does it help us fight him?”

  “Dude,” said Zef. “I don’t think this is someone helping us. Feels more like someone’s—”

  “Taunting us,” said Kate.

  “Don’t say that,” snapped Valerie.

  Kate spread her hands. “What would you call it?”

  “I’m freaking out, guys,” said Joey.

  Zef took Joey’s hand and kissed it. “It’s okay, baby. They’re only cards. Let’s just… see it through to the end.”

  He dealt number fourteen. Temperance. An angel poured water from one cup into another. The meaning of this image wasn’t as obvious as some of the others.

  “Valerie’s got an idea on this one,” said Zef.

  “Just before Jason’s disappearance—” Valerie said. “We made a little discovery.”

  “The coupling,” said Kate. “This is the energy going from me into him.”

  “You’re right,” said Jason. “And we figured that out just before I went down into the cellar. Just before—”

  “Just before this?” said Zef.

  He threw down card number fifteen, and Jason’s blood ran cold. It was the Devil. A terrible horned beast sat on his throne, bat-winged with a pentagram on his brow, putting his torch to souls chained in hell—one male, one female.

  “So who’s the Devil?” whispered Joey.

  “Three guesses,” said Zef. “He played Satan at Horseman’s Hollow.”

  Jason remembered. The goat leggings were even the same—just like the ones he and Joey had tried to seed with lice in a failed prank. King o’ Darkness himself. Satan on his throne. We’re going to kick your ass after school, kid.

  “It’s Eddie Martinez,” Jason said. “I found out about the coupling, went d
own into hell, and met Eddie Martinez. And I was… chained up. So was Eliza.”

  “So was I, kind of,” said Kate.

  Jason mumbled profanities until Valerie looked away, embarrassed. “This is nuts.” He struck the piano with one fist. “What’s going on here?”

  “I told you,” said Zef. “It was all predestined.”

  “I don’t believe that!”

  “How about now?” Zef dealt card sixteen. The Tower. Kate whirled away and covered her face.

  “Holy shit,” muttered Joey.

  “Holy—shit,” said Valerie, with a nod.

  “Holy. Shit.” Jason swallowed. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Two figures, male and female, jumped from a burning tower in a lightning storm.

  “It’s the lighthouse, isn’t it?” said Zef.

  “I don’t want to see any more,” said Kate.

  “You have to see.”

  Kate glared at him. “See what? We’re caught up. That just happened. That’s now. So we’re done, right?”

  “No,” said Zef. “I think this is now.”

  He turned over card seventeen. The Star. A naked blonde, beautiful and serene, kneeling next to a pool, pouring water upon the land.

  “It’s you, Kate,” Jason said, his voice low. “It’s… a Star-Maiden.”

  “It’s not me,” Kate said. “How can it be me?”

  Jason didn’t reach for her, fearing she’d pull away again. “Look what she’s doing. She’s pouring water out onto the ground, like you did for Eliza, when you washed the salt away. Remember the Star-Maiden story? There’s seven little stars around the big one. The seven sisters.”

  “The Pleiades.” Kate’s eyes grew wide and full of dread. “I went to Spook Rock and danced, naked… and… and this is… now?”

  “Yes,” said Zef.

  “How do you know that?”

  Zef pointed at the ceiling. Joey looked up, made a strangled noise, and sank to the carpet, hugging his knees. On the ceiling of the music room of Lyndhurst Manor, like the figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, were rows of dancing maidens…

  … and seven stars.

  “This card,” said Zef, holding it up, “is the present moment. The five of us, here and now. But there are still four Arcana left. Four cards before the cycle’s complete.”

  “Let’s have them,” said Jason.

  Zef laid them down. “Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. The Moon. The Sun. Judgment. The World.”

  “So these are still ahead?” said Jason.

  “If the pattern continues.”

  “Okay. Give it to me. What does each represent?”

  “The Moon,” said Valerie, “represents some—moment of realization. An intuitive leap. An idea crawling up—out of the past.”

  Jason studied it. A little lobster, crawling out of the murk, and two dogs howling at the moon…

  He turned his attention to card nineteen, and a lump rose in his throat.

  “That’s Eliza.” He began rocking back and forth, hugging himself, staring at the Sun—the baby on a horse, riding giddily through a field of sunflowers.

  “I know,” said Valerie.

  “That’s Eliza’s significator. We put it in her coffin with her!” Jason felt panic rising. Tears erupted, and he let them run, hardly noticing them. “Did you plan this, Valerie?”

  “How could I?”

  “Someone’s playing a trick.” Jason looked from face to face. “Why are all these cards about me? Someone’s playing a trick on me!”

  Zef looked miserable. “Don’t shoot the messenger, man.”

  The room seemed to flip upside down. Jason felt like the Hanged Man now, not the Fool. He was helpless, caught like something in a butcher’s window. All the blood was rushing to his head. He stared at the next card. Judgment. An angel blows his trumpet, and the dead rise from their graves.

  “So, what? Freaking Judgment Day is coming?”

  Joey had risen from the floor to look at the cards. His face filled with fear. “It’s the Necromancer. The thing blowing the trumpet. It’s the Necromancer!”

  “That’s enough,” said Valerie. “Put the cards away.”

  “Is Joey right?” said Jason. “Is that what the card means? Mother Hulda’s prophecy? Agathe’s going to raise the dead through her blood?”

  “No one can raise the dead,” Valerie said, her eyes fierce. “No one. There’s no Necromancers. It’s just a legend.”

  “What legend?”

  “Forget it,” said Valerie. “I’m sorry we—showed this to you.”

  “What are you hiding?” Jason studied her face. “What are you afraid of?”

  She looked at him calmly, and he found nothing in her eyes.

  Jason studied the Judgment card again, the open graves, the lids of coffins thrown wide, the dead people rising—naked with grey bodies and outstretched arms. One of them had long blond hair. As if Kate were with the dead and had risen to the angel’s call. He didn’t believe in Judgment Day. But… he hadn’t believed in a lot of things when his journey began, way back when he was the zero at the very top.

  “What about the last card?” said Kate. “Card twenty-one?”

  “The World,” said Zef. It bore a female figure. Nude but for a length of long billowing cloth, like the tail of a comet. She held the same double-wicked candle as the magician, but two of them, one in each hand, as a majorette holds double batons. A green wreath encircled her.

  “It… doesn’t look scary,” said Joey.

  “That can be deceptive,” Valerie whispered. “In the old decks—that was Christ. And the figures in the corners are from—the book of Revelations. ‘And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast—had a face as a man, and the fourth beast—was like a flying eagle.’”

  “So Judgment Day again,” said Joey.

  “Agathe triumphant,” said Kate. “Fire in both hands.”

  “No, no,” said Zef. “The World is just… the end of the cycle.”

  “For good or bad?” said Jason.

  Zef inhaled. The group stood suspended—just as a conductor stands in the last moment of a concert, arms suspended while the music dies—just as the resurrected dead stand before the silenced trumpet of the Archangel—holding their breath between the lightning and the first thunderous clap.

  Zef exhaled. “I guess… we’ll find out.”

  Jason stepped back and wiped his eyes, taking in the whole spread, all the events of his past year, in chronological order and three parts. The villains, the friends, the disasters, the hardships, the lights and darks and in-betweens. The moments that tried his soul and tested his mettle, the arcane forces that dogged his steps… and the unknown dangers still to come.

  Jason Crane’s Sleepy Hollow adventure.

  The Journey of the Fool.

  “What are we doing?” said a pleasant English voice. The group spun, startled. Mather had appeared in the doorway. He wore a tweed suit and a new purple boutonniere to match his eyes. A peal of thunder broke through the manor, as if to taunt their jangled nerves.

  “Just keeping busy,” said Zef, sweeping the Arcana into his hand.

  “Tarot readings?” said Mather with delight. “I love tarot readings! Do me!”

  Valerie took her time rising from the piano bench. “Here, Gift-Catcher.” She handed the cards to Mather with a smile. “Why don’t you—go do yourself?”

  Mather’s face grew cold and viper-like, but he accepted the cards.

  Valerie turned her back on Mather and gathered her kids, like a den mother escorting her scout troop on some museum tour. The five strolled off as one—out of the music room and down the moody hallway, into the worrisome future.

  The Moon…

  The Sun…

  Judgment…

  The World…

  The Moon…

  The Sun…

  Judgment…

  The World…

  Jason dealt the last fou
r cards in his head as they walked, trying to glean the meaning of them and dreading what might be to come.

  The Moon…

  The Sun…

  Judgment…

  The World…

  Lightning glared through a row of east-facing windows, throwing rectangles of watery light at their feet.

  Why me? thought Jason. Why are the cards about me?

  The group marched in silence, window by window, as the lightning dealt cards on the velvet ahead.

  The Moon…

  The Sun…

  Judgment…

  The World…

  “The cards aren’t in charge, people,” Jason whispered. “We stick to the plan, okay?”

  The group nodded agreement, but their faces were blank. They shuffled onward, helplessly, as if going to their hangings, hand in hand. They shuffled past mannequin monsters and Halloween frights, past ancient paintings and dusty bookshelves, to the drum of the thunder and the clap of the shutters and the ticking of the stately clocks: the Grave-Digger, the Deep Witch, the Star-Maiden, the Magician’s Son… and the Fool.

  “We stick to the plan. That’s all we can do.”

  Mather flipped through the tarot cards on his way back to the guard room. “What in the world are they up to?”

  Lisa Mayfair stepped from the shadows to walk beside him. “They think the tower up top might be out of the Dead Zone. They plan to sneak up there tonight.”

  “Clever. It might even have worked. Time?”

  “Midnight.”