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

by Gleaves, Richard

  “I never stopped loving you,” Hadewych whispered, his lips close to her ear. “Even after you ran, even after I found out about the affair, I loved you. You broke Zef’s heart. Maybe he’s… what he is… because you made him hate women. You made me hate women. Because they weren’t you. Tell me you still love me, Jess. I’m willing to be fooled. Tell me you feel a scrap of love, and we’ll run away together. We’ll find Zef and run and be a family. Just… please. Be a lying bitch. One more time. For me.”

  He untied her gag.

  Jessica bared her teeth. “Rot in hell.”

  His face went hot. He slapped her, hard. “God, I’ve wanted to do that.” He slapped her three more times. “I could do this all day.”

  “I bet you could.”

  “One for every year!” Another slap. Another. Five more. “Maybe if I hurt you, Zef will feel it. Maybe if I hurt you, he’ll come.” He punched Jessica in the stomach. “Do you feel this? Do you feel this? Do you feel anything?”

  Jessica cried out; her body stiffened. No. No. He had killed her. His punch had ruptured something inside her, split her spleen and ruined her innards… But she was not dead—a spirit had climbed inside his ex. Her face was blank. She was alive, but possessed.

  “No, no, no,” Hadewych shook her. “Get out of my wife. I need her. I need to talk to her. We might not get… another chance…” He sobbed. Jessica turned her head and obediently joined the others in his wake.

  Hadewych had gone cold by the time he returned to Agathe. His hands were dark. He trailed twenty-one Gifted, including Eddie, Valerie, Jessica, and the guards of Paul Usher.

  “Should be enough blood,” Agathe said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Brom needs a father,” she whispered, eyes darkening, staring into space. Her fingers kissed the reliquary glass, raising sparks. “It’s past time I remarried.”

  The psychic alarm was deafening.

  MOM! JESSICA! VALERIE! NO! PUNCH! HURT!

  A cup of cider fell from Zef’s hand, splashing his legs with ripe-apple venom. The plywood floor of the concession tent thrummed with the steps of the crowd, like a heartbeat beneath his shoes. He watched the people helplessly, wondering who would die tonight. Praying for his moms, praying that Jason had been wrong, that nothing would happen. But horrors were coming. He felt them. In his blood.

  “Are you listening, hon?” Jennifer bent over the plastic sneeze guard and handed him a replacement cider. She had orange and black stripes in her hair. “That’ll be thirteen seventy-five.”

  Zef paid, took his change, and pushed through the crowd, holding his donuts and cider, trying not to spill. The pumpkin chandelier grinned from above. Projected bats swooped across the ceiling of the tent. He sidestepped bales of hay and orange-draped cocktail tables. A couple of teenagers dueled with glow-stick lightsabers. “Hey!” shouted some adult, berating them. “We’d like to get home with our eyes, thanks!” Zef sidestepped baseball caps and hoodies and jerseys and bobbing pumpkin antennae. He staggered from the tent, gasping with relief to be back outside.

  Throngs of people stood in their cattle-chutes, tickets at the ready. Christmas lights drooped across the sky. The DJ spun tunes from the Disney Legend, talking over the music, asking trivia questions. He was the kid who did the morning announcements at school—the Sleepy Report—except now he was painted green and had huge pointed ears and purple monster hands.

  “Everyone excited for the Blaze?” His distorted, amplified voice was loud enough to explode eardrums. “We’re about to start. Nine o’clock ticket holders, line up. We’re giving away Blaze T-shirts. Woo! Answer the question, ‘Who narrated The Legend of Sleepy Hollow for Disney?’”

  “Bing Crosby!” shouted a girl, and the demon DJ threw her a T-shirt, setting off a shrill squeal as seizure-inducing as the flashing strobe lights.

  Zef skirted a row of goofy-faced cardboard pumpkins and met Joey at the picnic tables next to the millpond. The hollow banging of the port-a-john doors on the other side of the National Rent-a-Fence sounded like cannon fire.

  “Thanks,” said Joey. “I always eat when I’m scared.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah, well, now you do. A million things to go, I guess. Shit. It’s starting.”

  The DJ squawked into the mic again. “Now put your claws together for a special guest, diiiiiii-rect from Transylvania. Let’s hear it for Mayor Nielsen.”

  The mayor climbed up to the booth. He wore a black satin vampire cape, lined in red. He bared dime store fangs and got some applause. He spit them into his hand and took the mic. “I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight. They tell me the ticket sales have been great. It’s a good cause, good for the town. We’ve, uh, been through a lot. And there are families out there who’ve seen some bad times. But we’ll pull through it, yeah?”

  The crowd cheered and pumped fists in the air.

  “It’s our Hollow, right? And we’ll pull through together. So, let’s have an awesome Blaze, everybody. Launch the pumpkin float!”

  Men heaved a wooden raft into the water, about ten feet square. At least two dozen jack-o’-lanterns scowled atop it, like castaways on an island, lost among the stars. Other townspeople bent, setting home-carved pumpkins on smaller rafts, sending them to drift out onto the water, Moses among the reeds: jagged faces, mirrored from below, turning and turning with the current.

  A low, spooky music rose from the grounds of Philipsburg and the crowd whooped, waving tickets. Mayor Nielsen stepped down, joining a group of teachers from the high school: Mr. Wollenberg, Principal Grayson, Mr. Smolenski. Zef looked for the mayor’s three little girls, but didn’t see them. He only saw one kid under thirteen in the whole crowd—a boy who looked kind of scared.

  The babbling throng pushed forward. Men in black T-shirts scanned their bar codes. Boop. Boop. Boop. Marking people for death. Kids and couples went laughing down the lantern-lit path. The grounds of Philipsburg, on the far side of the water, looked like a twinkling fairyland, if the fairies in question had a monomaniacal fascination with the color orange.

  “I can’t eat,” said Joey, throwing his doughnut into the trash.

  “Where the hell is Jason?”

  “You think he’s still in the tunnels?”

  “No idea.”

  “Maybe she caught him. Maybe she killed him.”

  “We should have gone with him.” Joey bit his lip, and Zef regretted what he’d said. Of course Joey should have put his dad first. And he had to put Joey first.

  “If Jason were in danger, wouldn’t you feel it?” Joey tapped his temple.

  “I—” Zef looked pained and embarrassed. “Probably not.”

  “But you’re cousins.”

  “Jason and I have had a tough time, baby. The way the alarm works, I’d have to love him.”

  “Like ‘love’ love?”

  “No. Like I love my mom. And Valerie. And Kate.” And you, Zef thought, but was scared to say it. His nerves grew more jangled with every bang of the port-a-john doors. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! HELP! NOW! DANGER! RUN! “I can feel them, on and off. They’re fighting her control. They keep—coming and going. Shit shit shit! What the hell do we do?”

  Joey spun, staring at the crowd. “Come on. Do do that voodoo that you do so well. Whammy them all.”

  “No. I’m new at this, and there’s too many.” Zef scratched his head. “I’m… useless here.”

  “And I’m not?”

  “You kick ass when you need to. There’s… one thing I could do. You won’t like it, but…” He took a deep breath. “I could go.”

  Joey stood up, feeling shocked and angry. “You’re bailing?”

  “No. You heard Agathe back at Lyndhurst. She called me ‘our sweet Joseph.’ She still thinks I’m—”

  “Oh, no.” Joey threw his cider cup in the trash. “No no no. You can’t go back to her.”

  “I can do more on the inside. Even if Jason finds the bones, we still n
eed Valerie. We’ve got to get her out.”

  “No. We’ll find another way.”

  “Okay. Okay. It was just an idea.” He gave Joey a brief kiss, ignoring a giggle of “Get a room” from a pair of passing college kids.

  The DJ bent to the mic again. “Nine-fifteen tickets. Nine-fifteen tickets. We’ve got some hats to give away next, but first, would Mr. Joey Osorio please come to the gift shop? Joey Osorio to the gift shop. Now, who else likes scary movies? Who can tell me the name of the hotel in The Shining?”

  Joey and Zef power-walked around the concession tent and pushed into the gift shop, weaving through the kitsch. Joey rapped on the display counter and got the attention of the cashier, an attractive woman with pumpkin earrings.

  “They paged me? Joey Osorio?”

  “Oh, yeah. We’ve got a call for you.”

  “From who?”

  She passed him the phone. “Do you know a Jason?”

  Joey and Zef each pressed an ear to the receiver, blurting, “Where the hell are you?”

  Jason sounded exhausted. “I’m in Croton, guys.”

  “Croton?” Zef blurted. “What are you doing in Croton?”

  “Getting out of the damn aqueduct.”

  “You walked?” said Joey. “Croton’s nine miles from here!”

  “Tell me about it. I feel like a spawning salmon. Can you come get me? I kinda… broke into somebody’s house.”

  “What for?” said Joey.

  “I had no phone or money. My hands won’t stop glowing. I can’t let people see me. Besides, it’s not like I can take the train back. I’m… carrying bones.”

  “You found them?” Zef said.

  “Yeah.”

  Joey twisted the cord. “Okay. Okay. Um. Good job. We’re on our way.”

  “Do me a favor? Bring me some dry clothes?”

  “Sure. What’s the address?”

  Jason gave it.

  “On our way.” Joey hung up.

  “You didn’t tell him about the Blaze,” said Zef.

  “We’ll break it to him on the way back.”

  “You go. I’ll keep watch.”

  “No. No. We stick together.”

  “We can’t leave these people unprotected. You can get to Croton in ten minutes if you floor the Beamer—and another ten minutes back. It’s only twenty minutes. Just go.”

  Joey searched the gift shop aisles, poring through sweats and hoodies, looking for something dry to take to Jason. He made a face, scratched his head, and asked the cashier, “Does everything have the Horseman on it?”

  Zef watched Joey push through the crowd. His boyfriend turned around, gave a quick wave, and was gone. Zef felt bad about having lied to him, but he knew what he had to do. So many people had called him a coward recently. But he wasn’t a coward. Not anymore. And he would prove it.

  He would go undercover.

  HELP! NOW! DANGER! COME!

  He took off running, answering the alarm.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  “The March of Agathe Van Brunt”

  The broken gates of Lyndhurst flew wide, and Agathe began her long march. She radiated power and command and was beautiful in her flowing white. Bride of the Monster. She held the Horseman’s hatchet in one hand and the reins of the black horse in the other. Eddie Martinez, her frightened groom, rode bare-chested, his hands tied, the bit still in his mouth to keep him quiet. Even possessed, he kept whining. Lisa Mayfair walked blankly at Agathe’s side as ring-bearer, arms around the golden reliquary. Hadewych was best man. He wore a black Armani suit—his red tie like an incision down the chest of a heart patient—and one of the bird-faced plague masks. He was charged with keeping the possessed Gifted corralled, so that none of them wandered into traffic. The ghosts that moved the legs of these Gifted were some of the most evil of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Thieves and rapists and murderers, with enough strong malice to keep their victims prisoner, down in darkness, helpless within their own bodies.

  She whispered spells, flexing her strength, invoking all that was demonic and cruel: the spirit of death, the winds of chaos, Schacath the Red, the first fear. Him him him him. Ripping the seam between life and death, so that one could take its kiss from the other. Ghosts bore her along, and her feet barely brushed the ground.

  “Stop that!” Hadewych gasped. “You’ll curse the whole town.”

  “No I won’t,” she said. “Do you think I’d injure my future slaves? I’ve been preparing for this night for a long time. You’ll see.”

  She whispered a spell as they passed a scrawled fence. The graffiti of ghosts lit up with an unholy light. Arcane symbols caught fire, devil’s marks glowed on the sides of buildings, all-seeing eyes opened in ancient stone walls. Vines and crawlers claimed the sidewalks as she passed. Stones cracked and signs bent. Cars on the road came sputtering to a halt, headlights shattering. Confused drivers gaped up at the strange army, at the ghostly girl in the wedding dress, the captive bodybuilder on the red-eyed stallion, and the entourage of mutes and masks shuffling behind. The fools blinked, accepting. A Halloween parade, that’s all it was. An early Halloween parade. Not an act of magic, merely a magic act.

  “How are you doing this?” said Hadewych. “You’ve never been this strong before.”

  “Not as a living witch, but I have beaten death now. That is the source of all magic. Besides, a woman’s power is limitless on her wedding night.”

  “We’re going to walk all the way?” he grumbled. “I’m wearing dress shoes.”

  “Shut up, Hadewych. I’m listening to the cicada song.”

  Agathe’s fingers drifted to the reliquary now and again, igniting sparks of pleasurable magic that surged up her arm and tingled her body. She’d charged the thing with so much energy over the centuries. Now it charged her. Oh, yes, she had been preparing. Since that perfect kiss in the churchyard. Since that All Saints’ Day when she found her Horseman’s head in the millpond. Since her own death. A blood-red shadow bruised the moon, just as on the night of her release a year ago. All the blood, all the sacrifices, to rip the seam and perform tonight’s necromancy.

  A passing window read:

  Sleepy Hollow Realty

  Haunting the Hollow since 2008

  How sweet, she thought, much amused. I’ve haunted it since 1850.

  She whispered a spell in the ancient tongue, and mold claimed the building. She gestured, and flowers turned to dust. She whistled and worms woke, pushing through the mud. Agathe Van Brunt was the blight now. She had always been the blight. From the day she touched Spook Rock and learned she was a witch, her poison had radiated outward to claim Tarrytown.

  She felt a stab of pain and longing when her army reached the dark-windowed intersection of Main and Broadway. She drifted to earth, standing in blue-black starlight, staring at the horrid building that had replaced the Couenhoven Inn. Some sort of restaurant, its menus adorned with the Parthenon. What in the devil’s name was a… souvlaki? Rows of greenery grew in planters along the sidewalk. She withered them with a word. The fat red tomatoes swelled and burst their blood. She turned a circle, disoriented. Where was she? Where was her papa’s shop? What was a… 7-Eleven? She could feel the pitch of the ground, so familiar. But the river was farther away than she remembered. They’d filled the marshes. She searched the smooth black roads for Baltus’s taxi-wagon, searched her arm for the blood-wampum, gaped at the possessed strangers following her, not remembering why they were there. For one moment, she felt as she had on the night of Baltus’s frolic, as if some drop of the love potion still ran in her veins. She ran across the road, searching for the tavern, for Ichabod, the fiddlers, the pumpkin pie.

  “What the hell are you doing?” cried Hadewych.

  “Where is it? Where is everything I knew?”

  “It’s built over! What’s wrong with you?”

  Agathe spun on the grass in front of the Landmark Condominiums. “Burn it all!” she screamed. “Do it.”

  Hadewych looked horr
ified, but lit his hand.

  “No!” she gasped, running back. “My papa’s spirit may still be here. Look.” She raised a trembling finger, pointing at a little barber shop adjacent to the restaurant. “Follow me!” she barked, whirling and pressing on. Her triumphal parade continued down Broadway, and spectators blinked through darkness, unable to understand what they saw, just as she could not.

  Agathe balled her fists. She hated these thoughtless modern people. They had paved over the Old Loop! They had ripped down the inn! They’d spun wires in the sky! Only the hillside spoke for the old Tarrytown. She closed her eyes to feel the pitch of the terrain. She passed the site of her family’s cabin, wanting to lie on the grass and roll with Hans one last time, but found a Chase Bank and a Pay Half store standing in the way. Tears ran down her face. She lowered her veil to hide them. She sang the old Dutch threshing song under her breath, with anguish, as the march continued: “Janker Doedel went to town… In his striped trousers… Couldn’t see the town because… There were too many houses…”

  Her Tarrytown was gone! It lay beneath, as the dead lie beneath. But she was a necromancer, was she not? Necromancers reach beneath, into graves. Her world would rise again this night.

  “We are coming,” she whispered.

  Things moved behind the dark shop windows as she passed. Racks of clothes in the Vintage Customs shrugged their hangers and came to life. Headless mannequins rushed the glass, beating white stumps of neck, raising cracks. Fireflies rose from the bushes and trailed behind her. Innumerable fireflies.

  We are here! We are coming! All the old Knickerbockers! Little Agathe and her papa and Martling and Requa. The Van Warts and Van Rippers and Van Tassels! We have been mouldering. Beneath your roads, your concrete, your Key Food and liquor stores. You have neglected us. You have forgotten us. But we have never gone away. We are like the cicada, always in the dark, singing our eternal songs. And after tonight, you will remember. Oh, yes. You will. You will suffer for paving my slough…