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

by Gleaves, Richard

  Agathe dropped the body with a splash.

  “What’s happening?” the old woman cried, struggling in the water—and at the strange sound of her own voice, her fingers shot to her mouth, feeling for teeth and finding none. She screamed.

  Agathe muttered curses. The pilgrim soul of Colette Sanders had moved into a new home—another’s body, close at hand, just as weak, just as drained, just as well prepared. She and her victim had exchanged bodies. This was not part of the plan, but it changed nothing. It was better this way. Agathe preferred to kill things that fought back. She raised her knife and lunged for the screaming old woman.

  “Get away from my mother!”

  Strong hands seized her and threw her against the wall. She felt her skull crack and lost vision in one eye. She fell to the floor, dumbfounded by pain and confusion. Brom stood above her, his old face red and frightened. He ground his boot on her wrist until she let go the knife. He kicked it away, turned from her, and bent to the screaming old woman in the channel. Agathe fought to rise, to make Colette’s lips move, but she couldn’t. Brom had dealt her a terrible injury. This body felt heavy now. Blood had begun to trickle down her neck.

  Her victim clawed at Brom’s arms. “Save me! Save me! Oh, she’s had me prisoner. She’s a witch. I want to go home!”

  “You are home,” said Brom, not guessing to whom he spoke. “What has she done to you?”

  “She’s been starving me! For weeks!”

  Brom caressed her. “You’re making no sense. We dined together just yesterday.”

  “What’s happened? Why am I over there, on the floor?” She wailed, pointing at Agathe. “How can I be over there?”

  “Stand up. Come with me. You’re sick, that’s all…” He turned, and now stood gaping at the altar of skulls, the rows of torture implements, the hanging cage. “You’re very sick. But no matter. I’ll get you out of here. No one has to know about any of this.”

  “You’ll take me to my father?” She rose with difficulty.

  “Yes,” said Brom, humoring her. “I’ll take you to your father. We need to hurry though. The dam has broken up in Croton. I came to warn you. You might have drowned tonight.” He lifted her easily, cradling the old woman in one arm.

  Blood trickled into Agathe’s lap as she sat up. “Such a good boy,” she said, finding her voice. “You’ve always been protective of me.”

  Brom extended his free hand and set it ablaze, the fireball bright and vibrant. “Shut up,” he growled. “I’ll come back for you.”

  Agathe felt a stab of pride. She had wanted a strong son, and she had one. But she could not let such defiance stand. She still ruled her family, and always would. “Quench your fire, Abraham. And put the girl down.”

  He hesitated, recognizing her tone of command. His eyes narrowed as he neared. “Who are you?”

  “I think you know.”

  “She’s me,” whispered Colette, pressing her forehead to Brom’s shoulder, throwing her arms around his neck. “Oh, please take me out of here.”

  Brom ignored the woman, searching Agathe’s new face. “I asked you a question.”

  Agathe wiped blood from her hair. “You know who I am, son.”

  Fear dawned in his eyes. He turned away, looking at the horrors all around them. “I don’t think I know you at all, Mother.”

  “You should not have intruded, even in an emergency. This is my private place.”

  “You dare to criticize me?”

  “Do not raise your voice. I will explain.”

  “No explanations! No excuses! Who do I hold in my arms then?”

  “A girl I found, whose body I wanted.”

  Brom laid Colette on the floor, gently but with distaste, as if she were infected with some dark and contagious magic. She curled into a ball, weeping, clutching at his leg as he backed away, but too weak to hold him. Brom inspected the altar of skulls, reading the inscription.

  The Sins of the Father shall be Visited upon the Sons

  Even unto the Seventh Generation

  “What about the sins of the mother?” he whispered.

  “What sins?” Agathe struggled to rise. One side of her body fought her, losing sensation. “I am no sinner.”

  He laughed bitterly. “You might as well reveal everything. Must I wait until you die, to read your confessions?” The green leather diary lay next to the reliquary. He must have recognized it, for she had been writing for many months. He snatched it up.

  “Leave that!” Agathe shouted.

  “No more secrets. I’ve read most of it already. Did you think I would build you a house and not have my own keys?” He stuck the diary in a pocket and took up the reliquary. “Say goodbye to this as well. We shall be rid of it at last.”

  Agathe couldn’t believe her ears. “It’s your birthright!”

  “It’s my curse! Since the day you first tempted me with it. You couldn’t ensnare me with your promises of power. And I’ll be damned if you’ll take my son. You’ve built a fine coffin for your monster, and I shall bury him at last. This evil ends tonight. It all ends…”

  He froze. His gaze had fallen on the row of heads under glass domes. The special heads. Agathe’s favorites. She tensed. She knew what he would discover… who he would discover… staring back at him through the glass.

  “You keep the head of Baltus?”

  Now Agathe regretted labeling her collection. If only she hadn’t become so forgetful. “Let us speak upstairs, son.” She tugged at his elbow, desperate to tear him away before he looked at the next head in line. Hopefully he would turn aside now. Hopefully he wouldn’t look. Hopefully the rot had made her unrecognizable, or tarnish had obscured her label… Hopefully…

  With wide disbelieving eyes, Brom turned to the next head. He brushed dust from the glass dome with trembling fingers, revealing a once-beautiful face, ravaged by thirteen years of rot.

  “Katrina?” he whispered. “Mother, is this… Katrina?” With a cry of terror and agony, Brom sank to his knees, dropping the reliquary, joining Colette on the floor. His shoulders heaved and he beat the ground with his fists. “You dug up my Katrina? You took her head? Why? Why?”

  He searched Agathe’s face, hunting the soul hidden within. He seemed to find her out, and his eyes passed judgment. He knew now, with certainty, his mother’s evil. Agathe turned away, refusing to pronounce that verdict upon herself, evading the immense guilt, desperately grateful that she did not possess her fire Gift at this terrible moment. She beat her guilt into submission. Her heart rate slowed. She drew near, feeling pity for her boy. She knelt behind him, caressing his shoulders. “Shh. Quiet. Don’t weep for that one, son. She was a slut.”

  Brom whirled and struck her in the face with a closed fist. “I loved her!”

  Agathe fell to the floor, scrambling away. She tried to rise, but her bloody palm slipped on the stone. Brom flipped her over, straddling her body, and seized her by the throat with both hands.

  “What have you done?” he screamed, squeezing. He beat her head on the stone. “What the hell have you done!” He seized a skull from a nearby pile, gripping it by the eye sockets. He raised it high…

  … and beat Agathe’s pretty new face to a pulp.

  The terrible blows rained down, like an avalanche of falling stones, a quarry-full of them. Terror and panic rose in her. Not death. Not like this. Not at the hands of her own son. The head of Katrina grinned from the altar, watching as her husband avenged her at last. Agathe lacked her fire Gift, and could not defend herself, for she could not speak her spells. The beating went on and on, until Brom dropped the now-bloody skull and backed away, pressing his crossed arms to his face, red hands high in supplication to heaven.

  Agathe lay near death. She felt it coming, like a trickle up her spine. With regret, she whispered a spell and abandoned the body of Colette Sanders.

  Returning home did not hurt as terribly as leaving did. She reclaimed her own body easily. Colette had no chance to hold on, no will str
ong enough to defy such a powerful witch. Once back in her body, Agathe rose unsteadily, taking in the horrific scene. Brom knelt on the floor, turning a red-splashed skull in his hands, weeping over the body of Colette.

  The girl opened her eyes, bright blue in her mangled face, and whispered, “Why…”

  Then she died.

  Brom howled, throwing himself across the corpse. “I’m sorry! Oh, God! I didn’t mean to! Oh, what will I do?”

  “You might apologize.” Agathe bent, struggling to lift her reliquary. The old body felt unfamiliar to her now, and terribly disappointing. “I can’t believe you would murder me, son. After all I’ve done for you.”

  Brom wiped his face, exchanging tracks of tears for streaks of blood. “So I have merely killed an innocent girl.”

  “She wouldn’t have lived anyway. We’d both cursed her.”

  With sudden violence, Brom shot to his feet. “Damn you, Mother. Why won’t you die?”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes! I’m seventy years old. God give me one year without you.” His hands lit. He lunged, ready to kill her all over again, to beat her to death or burn her alive, as many times as it took.

  But Agathe could defend herself now. She produced a fireball of her own, driving him back, and… she howled with pain as blisters ran up the skin of her arm. Her Gift had turned against her. She felt too much guilt in this moment. Oh, she did love her son, even if he’d tried to kill her just now. Brom was all she loved. Brom and Dylan. And her Horseman. She hid her burns from her son, satisfied that her display had cowed him. “We will speak of this another time.”

  “We will speak now!” Brom tore the reliquary from her arms and hurled it aside. She feared he would burn her where she stood, but his face softened, now that her features were familiar again: the face of the woman who’d fed him and dressed him and called him her pride. “But we will speak upstairs. We must hurry before the flood comes.”

  “Will it be enough to rid us of the girl’s body, you suppose?”

  “I imagine it will.” He pulled her along, dragging her into the parlor, still set with a tea service, for she had planned to celebrate the transferal.

  “Turn loose!” Agathe snapped, struggling in her son’s grip. “We’ve left the reliquary behind!”

  “Better that filth should wash away.”

  “Let me go.”

  “Let it go!”

  “Never. Not my Horseman!”

  She whirled and raked Brom’s cheek with her fingernails, drawing blood. He released her, stunned and hurt. She hobbled back to her pantry and collected the reliquary. She returned to find Brom gazing up at the oil painting in the parlor. All the Van Brunts, caught on canvas in some brief summer when life had been good. He brought his hand to his scratched cheek, then touched Katrina’s face with bloody fingertips and infinite sadness.

  Agathe patted his arm. “She’s better down here than in the ground. You may visit her sometimes, if you ask nicely. Here.” She passed the reliquary into his arms. “I’m too weak carry this.”

  Brom looked down at the reliquary. “You are the Devil’s slave.”

  “The Devil is my slave.”

  “What is the difference, Mother? We shall all be equal in hell. We shall all be slaves of the Horseman someday. At least there’s time to save Dylan. God help me. There’s only one way, isn’t there?” He strode off, quicker than she could follow.

  “Brom! Slow your steps.” She shut tight the door of her parlor and twisted the little pewter lion’s head, then limped along behind him, falling farther behind. A trickle of water raced past her feet. “Brom?” She reached the stairs that led up to the cellar. Her son stood at the top, gazing down from the open door, the Horseman’s Treasure in his arms and her diary in his pocket.

  “Goodbye, Mother.”

  “Nonsense. Help me up these stairs.”

  “I’m sorry. I have to think of Dylan.”

  Brom Bones stood silhouetted in the doorway above. His body was still broad-shouldered and tall, so that Agathe might have mistaken him for the burly roystering blade he’d been in his youth, that roguish wag with a foxtail cap and a boisterous laugh, always ready for a fight or a frolic.

  Brom’s voice was old, though. Old and sad. “I always believed… that you would change someday.”

  He walked out and slammed the iron door. She heard the click of its lock, loud and final.

  “Brom?” She struggled up the steps, lighting a candle in the wall sconce with her finger. When she arrived at the top, the handle wouldn’t turn. “Brom? Unlock this door.” She beat on the metal, weakly. “Brom!”

  A splash of water burst into the stairwell, slapping the bottom stairs.

  “Brom! The flood’s here! Brom! Brom!”

  She beat on the door as the black water surged. It claimed the candle, throwing her into darkness again. Her hands blazed and she beat them against the metal, trying to melt her way through.

  “Brom! Brom! The water’s bleeding in!

  “Brom! Brom! The water’s bleeding in!

  “Brom! Brom! Brom! Brom!”

  A churning flood seized her frail body, doused her fire at last, and swept her helplessly away.

  “Brom!”

  Jason tore his fingers from the skull.

  “Brom,” he blurted, and the word came out as bubbles. He was underwater! He struggled. How long had he been transfixed by the vision? A minute? A moment? He kicked and searched, but found no air pocket. No. No. He would die as Agathe had, wouldn’t he? Swept away by currents and thrown into this reservoir, into this place… He’d die in Agathe’s toilet tank and rot with the witch, side by side.

  Side by side… Side by side…

  Jason’s hands went out as consciousness fled him. He heard cannon fire and horses. The Nightmare came. The old Nightmare.

  Sie sterben an der Brücke…!

  The Nightmare of the Broken Bridge, one last time.

  The Nightmare is a river fed by secret sources, from some drip of rainwater seeping through the graveyards of the past, gathering itself into a rush and tumble of images. William Crane raises a hatchet. The blade strikes Jason’s throat, just below the Adam’s apple. He feels the stock pass through, the blade slamming into the water. Jason’s head separates from the rest of him, gathered by the current. He rolls, floating face-down. Just a head. Not a man any longer. His strong body is lost. All his great energies gone. The fields of the earth are denied him forever. He sees the face of a beautiful woman with long dark hair… beckoning to him… beckoning to him… join me in death… join me on the other side…

  Jason feels a sharp pinch at the back of his scalp. William has caught the long, ribboned braid at the back of the Horseman’s head, and is reeling him in by it like a pumpkin on a vine. He and William stare at each other.

  “I have held the bridge!” William cries. “I have held the bridge!”

  And he hurls Jason’s head into the river.

  “No more nightmares.”

  The ghost of William Crane stood alone in the dark cellar of 417 Gory Brook.

  “No more nightmares. Forgive me.”

  William had followed his descendant throughout his adventures, just a firefly in Jason’s wake, unnoticed and unseen, ever since the boy had come to town. He’d watched as Jason fled the Horseman on Halloween, as he fought the Monster in the stables, at Stone Barns, here in the cellar. He’d watched the boy sleep. He’d been sending his nightmare confession into Jason’s dreams, just as the Horseman had been sending his threats. William still hoped the boy would find an answer within the vision, or, at least, would understand why all Cranes were marked for death.

  He had followed Jason from Lyndhurst tonight, as closely as he could, for the boy wore the talisman. He wanted to help. He did want to. He needed to make peace somehow. The things he’d done in his mortal life still disgusted him. They haunted his ghost-sleep, as his severed head slept beneath Agathe’s inscription.

&nbs
p; “My sins are not yours, boy. I started these horrors, not you. But only Crane blood may end them. I do not know why that is, only that it is so. You must live, so that He may kill you.”

  William had already turned the first iron ring set into the cellar wall. Now he focused his energy and seized the second. He twisted it, and another surge of water shot from the corresponding hole below. He repeated the act thrice more, twisting the remaining rings. The fourth spout vomited silver letters that clattered away. Brom’s zethaak puzzle key, left in its lock. The five streams shot past William and through him, filling the cellar, pooling in the center of the room and gurgling down the drain.

  Ichabod’s father watched the water run out. He felt himself going with it. He had done what he could for his last descendant. The rest was up to the boy now. For once, “the Hero of Gory Brook” had done something to earn the name. He groaned with satisfaction and pleasure as his spirit evaporated and broke apart, finding its oblivion at last.

  Oh, how had he never realized…?

  Taking a life feels so good…

  But saving a life feels better.

  Jason woke from his last Nightmare.

  He found a pocket of oxygen and swallowed great lungfuls of it. The pocket expanded as the water receded. He coughed and sputtered and cleared his lungs. His hands began glowing again. He couldn’t believe his luck. He said a silent thanks to whoever or whatever had saved him. He kicked his feet and held on to the lip of Agathe’s alcove. He pulled his shirt off, tied a knot in one end, and made a carrying bag for the matriarch’s bones.

  Now comes the hard part.

  PART SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  “The Millpond”

  At ten a.m., Joey’s mom returned to the hospital as promised, with clean clothes, coffee, and a bag of fresh danish. Joey and Zef changed, scarfed down the food and, at the first polite opportunity, let Pat take over at her husband’s side. Joey goosed the Beamer and they drove off, headed toward the millpond, to keep an eye on it according to plan. The stoplights were dark at all the intersections, and no one was directing traffic. Halfway past the cemetery, they almost hit a Con Edison truck as it backed out of Hemlock Street. They slowed and went around, passed the church, and crossed the Horseman Bridge. Joey pulled in next to the Citgo, just across from Philipsburg Manor, and they got out.