“Joey!” Zef called in the distance.
“Over here!” Joey screamed from the top of the hearse, bracing his feet and sinking Mr. Smolenski to the waist like a half-buried Redcoat Zombie. “Help! I’m surrounded by flaming straights!”
Hadewych kept the Gifted at bay with his fire, raising double fireballs that glinted in their furious eyes. About a dozen surrounded him, keeping him corralled between the end of the bridge and the gift shop. He had no time for these games. His son was in trouble! He unleashed fire and turned one of his attackers—an older woman—into a torch.
She screamed. A group of men grabbed her and sprinted to the water’s edge, dousing her, but she was badly burned.
Good, thought Hadewych, turning to face his remaining attackers. “Who’s next?” he growled.
Most of the others fled, sprinting across the parking lot. The flame-faced Tarrytowners caught most of these, breathing fire into their faces.
Only the bent-eared guard remained.
“Did you kill my sister?” the man shouted.
“I’ve never killed anyone.”
“Debbie Flight!” did you kill her?
“No. In fact, I paid her a hefty commission.” Hadewych threw flame at the guard but he jumped and landed twenty feet away. “Nice trick!” said Hadewych. He threw flame again. The man dodged the fireball with another leap into the sky. Hadewych’s fireball set the top of a locust tree burning.
A group of attackers sprinted up from behind. Strong arms seized Hadewych. With his eye on the flying guard, he’d forgotten the others. Before he could do anything to defend himself, they picked him up and, with a chorus of obscenities, threw him bodily through the plate-glass window of the gift shop.
The Horseman threw aside the last of his attackers. He sank his hatchet into the heart of the Halloween Tree, and all its pumpkins lit with fiendish delight. His army of ghosts came, bringing a fog of terror and despair, as if Jason needed more of either. He searched for a weapon, reached for a picket of the herb garden fence, trying to wrench it free. Ghosts threw themselves at the flame-faced minions, hurling them into the millpond, hanging them in trees, spinning and whirling and showing their skulls.
Jason couldn’t run. He wouldn’t leave Kate even if he could. There were bins of farming implements nearby—shovels, hoes—but he couldn’t reach them in time. He couldn’t even stand. God, the pain… he couldn’t… he couldn’t…
The Horseman stalked across the pumpkin displays, crushing them underfoot, hatchet in hand.
JASON CRANE, growled the reliquary.
The Blaze soundtrack let out a boom of percussion and stabbing Psycho string chords.
Jason hid his face. “No! No! No! No! No!”
“Mister!” A kid leaned over the herb garden fence, panting and over-excited. “Here! Here!” He offered Jason a many-tined pitchfork—a heavy, wicked-looking thing—and gasped, pointing, “He killed my daddy.”
Jason grabbed the pitchfork, and as the Horseman fell on him, he rose, fighting through the leg cramps, and plunged his weapon into the Horseman’s chest. A killing blow, straight through the rib cage and out the other side. Jason leaned into it, even as hot blood sprayed and the ghosts ripped at him.
The Horseman staggered back, dropped his hatchet, and fell to the ground spewing a fountain of red gore. Jason fell with him. They rolled through pumpkin mash and into the still barely glowing scrum of the millpond.
Jason’s leg cramps ended, with excellent timing as always.
He climbed off the Horseman, wiping blood from his Horseman logo sweatshirt, and backed up the shore.
Was the Horseman dead? Was the Horseman finally… dead?
Jason returned to the herb garden, his eyes still on the fallen Monster down the slope.
On the other side of the fence, the kid jumped up and down excitedly, screaming. “We did it! We did it!”
Jason wasn’t so sure. The ghosts still whirled overhead. The shroud of melancholy hadn’t passed over. “Let’s go!” Jason said, beckoning, pointing to Kate. “Help me carry her, kid.”
“My name’s Buddy!” the kid said, climbing the fence. “My mom turned into a monster. Help me find her?”
“Yeah. I promise.” He got his arms under Kate’s shoulders, dragging her. “But we need to hit the road. Now.”
“But we killed him!” the kid shouted. “I counted! It had seven spikes like the daggers of Meggido! Those can kill the Devil! Those can kill the Devil!”
Jason took one look and groaned. The Headless Horseman rose again, pitchfork dangling from his chest. He ripped it out and threw it aside, blood still dripping from the seven small wounds.
“Kid! Run!”
The boy saw the Monster and backed away, eyes wide, toward the garden. The Horseman summoned a pumpkin, carved with horns and a goatee like the Devil himself, and before Jason could do anything—
“Duck, kid!”
—the missile struck the little boy full in the head, slamming him against the picket fence. The boy fell into the mud, a limp pile of skinny arms and muddy legs and untied red sneakers.
And he did not move.
Even cut and bleeding, Hadewych was more than a match for his attackers. He poured flames in an endless torrent, filling the Philipsburg Manor gift shop with fire, shriveling sweaters and scarfs and exploding the display cases, setting all the Horseman tchotchkes alight, burning and burning and burning it all—every copy of the Legend, every book on Hudson Valley architecture or local history, every novel on display by the register. It felt good to burn it. It felt good to be Hadewych Van Brunt. He was full of joy and power and all lesser men fled from him in mortal terror…
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
“The Battle of Sleepy Hollow”
Valerie ran through the moonlit graveyard, the bones of Agathe clutched to her chest. The plastic fertilizer bag had begun melting, catching fire as sparks crackled inside and the witch fought to free herself. Yet Valerie sang. She sang wordlessly as she ran. She couldn’t help herself. Even on her desperate flight to the tomb, she sang Rachmaninoff, the music of exiles, for the return of her voice, wishing she had more air, wishing she could stop and sing arias to the marble angels.
But she had a job to do.
She found the Van Brunt tomb by the twisted stump on the slope above it, ran into the dark hollow of the hill, and used her Gift to snap the gate open. The chain broke and clattered to the ground. She clapped a hand to her throat, instinctively protecting her valve from the dust she’d raised, but she laughed helplessly as she realized she was free of such concerns, free to breathe dust and smoke and spray cans and flowers and perfume. Free from all her many, many fears.
She felt around in the darkness, finding the stone bone boxes, wondering if she should put Agathe inside one of them—put her in with Brom or one of her other descendants. But no—she knew where Agathe belonged, if she could find the secret entrance. She lay the smoking bag of bones down and searched the floor, looking for the hole Jason had told her about: the secret entrance to Agathe’s tomb, down below. She slapped the cold marble, searching for a seam.
A splinter raked her skin, and she brought a finger to her mouth. She’d found a square of plywood. A patch in the floor. She concentrated, mentally seized the board, yanking it free. A cloud of glorious, careless dust struck her body. She dropped the board, found a small stone, and threw it down. It clattered and echoed in the marble chamber below.
You’re going in the ground, witch.
Valerie snatched up the bones, swung her legs over, and dropped blindly into the abyss.
The kid had barely hit the grass when the Horseman retrieved his hatchet and lunged for Jason again, but just as the Monster had closed half the distance, the ground gave way beneath its feet and it sank as if into quicksand, buried chest-high, struggling to dig itself free.
Jason recognized the trick. “Joey! Thank God!”
But Joey wasn’t done saving him. He ran up and pushed Jason, hard, knocki
ng him to the ground just as the Horseman’s flung hatchet whipped past and embedded itself in the wall of the nearby barn.
“Be more careful, Spidey!” Joey shouted. “I almost lost you!”
Jason rose to his feet and backed away, keeping his eyes on the Horseman. He pointed to the small crumpled body on the ground. “We’ve got to get this kid out of here!”
Jason saw the hatchet quivering in the wood, but Joey didn’t. “Look out!” He dove for Joey and knocked his friend aside just as the hatchet flew back in the opposite direction, whipping into its master’s hand.
Jason stood and helped Joey to his feet. “We’re even.”
Zef came running up. He stabbed a finger into Joey’s chest. “I want you out of here, now!”
“Lay off, Mom.”
Jason grabbed Zef and pulled him out of the path of the hatchet’s next flight.
“Okay!” said Joey. “We’re leaving, now.”
Zef knocked Joey aside as the hatchet returned to the Horseman’s raised hand, the only part of him still visible. Joey growled and sent up another blast of dirt, covering the Horseman completely.
“Zef,” said Jason. “Get this kid out of here!”
“On it!” shouted Zef. He bent and scooped the boy into his arms.
“Joey, help me carry Kate!”
“Kate?” Joey spread his hands. “Where’s Kate?”
Jason spun. Kate was gone, and so was the reliquary. “She was right here!”
He turned a circle, searching the pumpkin-dotted grounds. There was no sign of her. The gift shop threw flame from every window, and the concession tent was on fire now, too. The Horseman Bridge was full of bewitched Tarrytowners struggling with the ghost army. The Halloween Tree blazed and smoked.
“You’ve lost Kate?” said Zef.
“I’ll find her! Go!”
Joey raised muddy hands. “I can’t go. You need me. I’m the big gun!”
Zef shook his head. “Not anymore!”
“He’s right,” said Jason. “You’ve done enough. You two carry this kid out of here. That’s your job.”
Joey tagged Jason on the shoulder. He sent one last wave of dirt over the Horseman, then helped Zef with the kid. The pair disappeared into the chaos.
Jason searched the grounds for Kate. Where had she gone? Had Agathe taken her again? He searched the sky, expecting her to appear like a whipping cloud, ready to throw lightning on her defenseless target. He ducked between the legs of the blazing pumpkin brontosaurus, jumped over a loop of the pumpkin sea serpent, sidestepped a madly shivering pumpkin totem pole. One of his sneakers came down and put the light out of Pumpkin Richard Nixon. Nixon got stuck on Jason’s big foot and wouldn’t turn loose. Jason stumbled onward, trying to shake the president off like it was an overly frisky dog. He stumbled and fell into Ichabod’s little schoolhouse, landing painfully among the benches. Pumpkin schoolchildren gazed down at him with giddy empty faces.
“La la la la la la…” they sang, from hidden speakers. “La la la la la la…”
An actor dressed as Ichabod, flame-faced, shuffled forward, whispering, “Pumpkin blaaaze…”
Jason threw one of the kids’ heads at him, knocking him back a few feet, then used the chalkboard to hold the schoolmaster at bay.
“La la la la la la…”
Where the hell is Kate?
Jason knocked the schoolmaster aside and rushed out the back. He crashed into a china cabinet of elaborate jack-o’-lantern carvings, like a display of Faberge eggs, and felt a stab of guilt as they shattered.
“Kate?” he cried. “Kate?”
The Horseman had pulled himself free of the dirt, rising from his grave. He raked his fingers across his mud- and blood-covered chest, leaving gouges like white war paint. He mounted the horse and kicked it. His ghost army assembled behind him as he charged, straight for Jason.
Jason heard a banging noise just above and turned.
The shutters on the top floor of the manor house had flown open. There, leaning out, blazing in the green spotlight, throwing her shadow up the white walls, was Kate, clutching the reliquary in one hand and waving with the other.
“Now, now, now!” she screamed.
The figure of an old man—a ghost with thinning hair and a waistcoat—appeared on the roof of the manor house. “Heads up!” he shouted, and threw a grinning jack-o’-lantern that arced and spun in the sky. It struck the Horseman square in the chest and knocked him right off his saddle, end over end.
Kate shouted, “Good shot, Mr. Irving!”
“I always wanted to do that,” the old man said, beaming. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. At his call a throng of ghosts came whipping from the shadows, attacking the Horseman’s Army, causing the ground to shudder and the shallow pond to quake.
Jason rushed into the manor house and took the stairs two at a time. He ran to Kate’s side at the window and gaped at the scene, shielding his eyes against the green spotlight glare. The two armies of ghosts, the staggering Tarrytowners, the mannequins herking and the corpses jerking, the burning concession and gift shop and the eternal—and annoying—groan of “Pumpkin blaaaze…”
“What the hell is this, Kate?”
She grinned. “Did you think Tinkerbell was eating bon bons all this time? I brought the cavalry!”
Down below them, the Blaze soundtrack struck up a heroic chord of trumpets and trombones.
“Cavalry?” said Jason. “Where the hell did you find a cavalry?”
“The skulls in the aqueduct!” said Kate. “Agathe was their dominant spirit! But you took her bones out! Now they’re free to fight!”
Valerie crashed to the floor of the secret chamber below the tomb, ripping skin from her calves as she struck a pile of shattered stone. She rose, eyes adjusting to the thin haze of moonlight from the hole above her head, and recovered the bone bag. She opened it, letting the sparks of orange and blue light her way, looking for Agathe’s burial niche. A portrait hung on the marble wall. A beautiful, auburn-haired Agathe. Valerie spat curses and raked fingers down the canvas, ripping it, cursing the witch who had possessed her mother.
Behind a pile of rubble, she found Agathe’s burial chamber. A tea cart and rotted rocking chair lay in one corner, but the center of the room was empty. She knelt and withdrew the sparking bones from the bag, one by one. She kissed a burned and blistered finger and sang softly as she worked.
“The skull bone’s connected to the neck bone…”
She placed the skull at the top. Keep the jaw with it. Its eyes spit flame and its teeth ran with blood. The spine came next. It had broken into individual vertebrae. She laid them in a row, trying to order them by size. She pulled out the rib cage—so delicate, so light. No heart inside, no organs. The flat pelvis, like a stone butterfly…
“The leg bone’s connected to the hip bone. The arm bone’s connected to the shoulder bone…”
At last she had the whole sparking skeleton laid out. Its light burned her eyes, it was so bright, like burning phosphorus or napalm.
Had she done it? Was Agathe properly buried?
No. The bones would have gone dark if she were.
She whispered the binding spell, but the skeleton merely sparked more lividly. What had she missed?
She needs a burial service, Valerie realized.
She recited the Lord’s Prayer, and then the twenty-third psalm…
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no—”
Blinding light burst from the ghastly skeleton beneath her, filling the room with color, revealing the painted strings of flowers and the initials A.V.B. high on the wall.
Then the skeleton went dark.
Valerie felt hope, but no triumph. Her goose bumps knew better.
She heard laughter and whirled.
A blue crone floated into the burial niche and snarled with hatred. “I should have killed you in the river.”
Joey struggled with the doors of the Be
amer. He kicked a tire. “Great! Jason’s got the car keys!”
Zef turned a circle, the comatose kid in his arms. Ghosts fought in the skies and swarmed through the locust trees of the Old Burying Ground. “We can’t be here now! It’s some super ghost battle crap!”
“Come on,” Joey said, waving him back up the embankment.
“Where are we going?”
“Holy ground!”
Joey led Zef to the door of the Old Dutch Church. He turned the knob, and surprisingly, it wasn’t locked. They carried the kid inside and froze at the rear of the church. The pews were occupied. About fifty Tarrytowners sat there, facing front, frozen in a posture of rapt attention. At the altar rail stood Jonathan Kruk, the official town storyteller. He wore colonial garb of green velvet, with knee breeches and buckles. He had long brown hair and a tricorn hat, and held aloft a gnarled staff and an artificial pumpkin. Spigots of blue flame licked from his eyes and mouth, just as it did from every face in his audience.
Zef whispered, “It’s a Legend performance.”
Joey scratched his head. “How long have these people been here?”
A middle-aged woman with an aisle seat turned her jack-o’-lantern head, brought a finger to her lips, and whispered with a puff of blue fire and orange sparks, “Shhhhhhh.”
The toothless ghost of Agathe raised a claw, looming over Valerie. “Who do you think you are, you weak little girl? I remember you. ‘Mama! Mama! Please! No!’” Her chuckle echoed all around. “‘Not the car keys! Not the car keys!’”
Valerie felt herself trembling, the old fear returning. How could she have imagined she’d ever be rid of it?
“You’re useless,” Agathe sneered. “It’s not worth the time to gut you.”
Valerie cried out and ran from the niche. But the opening she’d jumped through was too far above to climb out again. Oh, God! Agathe was already on her, toying with her, possessing her in little nips of agitated entrance, taking control of Valerie’s hand, making it slap her own face. In desperation, Valerie stood on a piece of marble and used her Gift to lift it into the air, then used it as a step to grab the lip of the hole. She scrambled up and over. But as she did, she bumped against a sandstone bone box, heard a scraping noise above, and the stone lid of the box slid off and landed on her back, pinning her. She threw it aside with her Gift, but it required more effort than it should have. She was weakening. Her fear was weakening her.
SLEEPY HOLLOW: General of the Dead (Jason Crane Book 3) Page 74