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

by Gleaves, Richard

  But these tears are not the first tear.

  The first tear—the source—lies even further upstream.

  Back over the salty sea. A storm on the journey to America. Waves beat against the hull of the transport ship. The Horseman lies flesh-to-flesh with three other soldiers. One is dead. Another begs St. Nicholas for help. The third has roped himself to a beam, vomiting into the fishnets above. The faces of seasick and heartsick men stare from shadows, each in ragged and pitiable condition. The air smells of stomach acid and shit and maggoty rations. Disease runs rampant here. A third have died, only halfway across the Atlantic, but what do their masters care? These men are expendable. These men are slaves. Snatched from their fields, made to march and drill, to kill for King George who pays in gold. Their prince makes more if they never come home. Who cares if they die?

  The Horseman snarls and bites into a square of salted beef. Droplets of bile rain onto his back. No enemy will kill him. No master will rule him. He will kill King George. He will kill the Prince of Hesse. He will kill the whole Continental Army if need be. He will survive this. He will go home. He is a man, and a man will not be separated from his family.

  Rise from the sea and follow the Rhein, back to the cradles of Prussia.

  A beautiful dark-haired woman stands on the threshold of a farmhouse, salting it with her tears. Her eyes are bloodshot and she is losing her dignity. She holds a tiny bundle in her arms. A red-faced infant with a clutch of black hair, smooth against a purple forehead. A newborn, with eyes shut tight and balled fists raised. The Horseman slips a finger into the child’s grasp, testing the grip. The baby holds tight. His son is strong. That is good. The boy will need strength. If only he would open his eyes, and greet his father, just once…

  The Horseman had escaped from drill camp that morning, had run back to his farm to make love to his wife one last time. And to have a look at his newborn boy. One look. One last day. Now the officers have come. They are running up the hill, to throw him in chains, to spirit him away to war in the Americas.

  His wife—Margarethe—kisses him. “Do not let some woman ensnare you.”

  “Never.”

  She presses a white silk scarf to his heart. “Come home to me. Come home to us.”

  His fingers close on the scarf. “I swear it.”

  Before he can steal another kiss, hands seize him and drag him away. His finger is ripped from the grasp of his boy. The infant screams. His wife attempts one last embrace but soldiers hold her back. The scarf stretches between them as he’s pulled away. It snaps from her hand and whips into the air. The soldiers throw him into the iron wagon. He waves the scarf through the bars of his cage.

  “Johannes!” she cries. “Do not forget me!”

  “Never! I will come home. I swear it on my soul!”

  He gathers the scarf and holds it to his lips. His wife breaks free of the soldiers and runs after the wagon as it carries him away. His farm of springtime green dwindles into the distance. She lifts the wailing infant high as she, too, falls behind. Dust from the hooves of horses obscures his last sight of her, but he can hear her words, and the screams of his son.

  “We will wait for you!” she cries. “We will wait for you forever!”

  And now it falls.

  His first tear.

  The first tear of Johannes the farmer. Johannes the slave. Johannes the soldier. Johannes the Horseman. The first tear shed for the loss of his family. For the loss of his wife and son. The first of many.

  The secret source of the river to come.

  shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhH…

  The vision broke.

  Jason lay on the cold hard stone of Ichabod’s bridge, the skin of his belly scratched bloody by broken shards of reliquary glass, trembling in moonlight, studying the skull and those eyes that brimmed with shadows, the eyes of his nemesis, the killer of his parents, the dominant spirit of Sleepy Hollow.

  “Ergeben,” the skull whispered.

  A cloud unveiled the Moon. Something crawled up from the river below, a tiny idea, searching for land. Jason’s subconscious dealt the Five of Cups, a card he’d forgotten until just this moment, a card he’d last seen in a tarot reading last Christmas Eve—“the card of immense regret,” Valerie had called it. The Five of Cups bore an image of a figure swathed in black, grieving for his lost home—tiny in the distance. Over the water, over the bridge. Grieving for his lost home… in Prussia.

  The idea grew, evolving legs and lungs.

  The dark-haired woman beckoned…

  (“Come home to me. Come home to us.”)

  The officer drew his map.

  (“Take that bridge and the war will end.”)

  The Horseman had failed his final mission—beheaded by a man named Crane. (“I have held the bridge! I have held the bridge!”) Robbed of his chance to go home at last…

  To his wife… (the silver ring Agathe took from his hand)

  To his newborn son… (did the boy have a name?)

  He’d been left to rot in an unmarked grave beneath alien earth, beneath a pile of enemy corpses. And then what? The peace of death? The heaven he undoubtedly believed in? No. He was ensnared by a woman, enslaved again—by a witch this time, not a prince. Sent on endless bloody missions—but never the one he longed to complete. Never the battle he needed to win. He needed to kill his enemy. He needed to kill a Crane at the bridge. (Sie sterben an der Brücke…) At this bridge, or the Tappan Zee Bridge, or the bridges of Stone Barns, or the bridge in the cemetery, or the Kensico Dam, or the corduroy road over the Andre Brook, where he first met Ichabod Crane. He must kill his enemy (William, Ichabod, Absalom, Jesse, Jack, Adam, Andrew, Jason, any Crane would do). Kill his enemy and take the bridge… the bridge where a hatchet split head from neck, husband from wife, father from son, and body from soul.

  The Moon turned over a tarot card, reversed on the black velvet water, the Major Arcana of deep intuition, bubbling out of the murk of the past…

  “Ergeben…” whispered Johannes, the man behind the Horseman, eye to eye socket with Jason Crane.

  “Ergeben,” Jason answered.

  He understood.

  Something flashed to Jason’s left. Fire. He leapt from the stone pier and into the raging waters, clutching the skull under his arm. He hit the water hard. His free hand shot out and grabbed the bridge abutment before the current could slam his body against the boulders.

  Hadewych glared down from above—leaning over the broken edge—his face lit by flame, a rivulet of spit and blood dangling from his broken mouth.

  “You little bastard! Look what you’ve done to me!”

  Hadewych threw fire and Jason ducked beneath the water. His elbow hit a stone and he lost his grip on the skull. It tumbled into the current and he couldn’t go after it.

  He was a sitting duck. He couldn’t even hide; Hadewych could see his hands, glowing beneath the surface. Jason came up for air and the fire fell on him again. He pushed off from the riverbed, jumping and zigzagging, dodging fireballs, trying to hide his hands, pressing them to his chest as they glowed ever brighter. He crossed the river and hid behind ferns on the eastern shore. They caught the blaze and went up in brilliant color. He found a boulder and hid behind that. Flame splashed his sheltering rock and a wave of heat broke over his head, sizzling like butter on a skillet. By its red light, he saw the skull—caught in a tangle of roots just downstream. He broke from cover and made a feint in the opposite direction, waited for Hadewych to follow him upstream, then threw himself into the current, riding it, one hand out, grabbing the skull in a desperate grip and ducking under the water again as Hadewych caught on and doubled back, throwing fireballs from his perch on the bridge. Jason clawed his way back out of the water, using the opposite half of the bridge—the eastern side, the Horseman side—for a shield, and staggered to his feet on the far shore, shivering in the same sheltered cove where the Horseman had died.

  He climbed the abutment, gaining the top. Hadewych stood on his own brok
en pier across the foam. They glared at each other from opposite sides of the river. Hadewych’s burning hands and Jason’s glowing hands made perfect symmetry across the distance between the two broken halves of the bridge. Two smoking red fists of destructive fire mirrored by two white floodlights of healing energy.

  “Don’t make me do something drastic, Jason. Don’t let your friends pay for your mistakes.”

  “Go to hell,” Jason said.

  “Give me the skull.”

  “No.”

  “It belongs to me.” Hadewych bared his shattered teeth and produced another fireball. “You’re out of options.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Jason knew what he had to do. He had only one choice, and it scared the hell out of him. He raised the skull, slowly, pressed a bleeding hand to that spidery white forehead, and shouted—

  “Rise headless and ride!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  “Make the Bridge”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Hadewych snarled.

  “Rise headless and ride!” Jason repeated, scanning the darkness, praying the Horseman would show.

  “He won’t answer to you. He belongs to the Van Brunts.”

  Jason squeezed a fist over the skull, splattering it with even more blood, smearing it with the blood of the Cranes. Blood in the water. Chum in the water. Summoning the hunter. Summoning the shark.

  “Rise headless and ride!”

  And on Jason’s third cry, the skull began to glow. The empty and shattered reliquary at Hadewych’s feet mirrored it, shining with bitter phosphorescence, and an incantation in old Dutch scribbled itself across the gold. A sharp wind rose, full of curlicue leafmeal and cicada wing. Sticks and vines twisted in midair. A flurry of old bones danced in the moonlight, broken from the prisons of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, spinning and clacking above their heads. Acrid smoke from Hadewych’s burning hands joined rising ash from smoldering underbrush, surged and thickened, seethed and frothed, copulating with pumpkin guts and spider web, a ribbon of orange crepe and a tendril of graveyard dirt, to form a horse and headless rider. A hatchet flew into the Monster’s hand. The hatchet of William Crane. And then, fully formed, the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow rode to Jason’s side—obedient and attentive, a moonlit reaper, waiting for a mission…

  … waiting for a name.

  “Say my name then,” said Hadewych. “Say it! You think you’re so much better than me. But you’re not, are you? You never were!”

  Jason took a deep breath. The name “Hadewych Van Brunt” hung on his lips. He could send his dark servant-ghost to slay his enemy. Right here. Right now. Why not? Why not do it? Vengeance at last. Community payback for all the dead of Sleepy Hollow Manor, and Lyndhurst, and Stone Barns. Revenge for the abuses, the cruelty, the fear. Retribution for every stolen dime and every clod of dirt on Eliza’s coffin. He could end this evil man, with a mere whisper. He could have his justice. He could have his satisfaction.

  But Hadewych was right. To use the Horseman would make him no better. No better than Agathe. No better than the Prince of Hesse in his marble palace. You can’t fight evil by practicing it, by accepting its rules and playing its game. He had no right to command the Horseman. You can’t force a man to kill for you—not for money, not for revenge, not even in self-defense. No man has the right to take a slave. No man owns another’s body, and no man owns another’s soul.

  What would your grandmother say?

  Jason made his choice and closed his eyes. He knelt on the ancient stones of Ichabod’s bridge and laid the skull at the Horseman’s feet.

  This had better work. This had better work. This had better work.

  Jason looked up at the Monster. “It’s yours if you want it,” he whispered. “I surrender.”

  “What are you doing?” growled Hadewych.

  Jason raised his glowing hands, proving his defenselessness. He raised his chin and exposed his throat. “I surrender. I surrender this bridge. Take it. It’s yours.”

  Hadewych shouted across the water, “I said, what are you doing?”

  “He just wants to go home!” Jason answered, and his voice caught in his throat, strangled by pity and fear and some violent emotion he’d never allowed himself to feel before. A wish to believe in an afterlife—a true afterlife, not a ghost-echo—to reunite with those he loved, and to continue his journey forever, by their side. “He needs to finish his mission and go home!” He looked up at the Monster through eyes brimming with tears. “Do you hear me? Ergeben! I surrender! Take the damned bridge! Cross over, if you can.”

  The Horseman kicked his steed. Jason winced, expecting an attack, but the horse clopped past, slowly, ignoring him, ignoring the skull, going to the edge, one hoof testing the end of the abutment. That hoof was a piece of broken headstone. It bore the symbol of the anchor, representing the hope of eternal life.

  “You’re free, Johannes,” Jason whispered, backing away. “Cross the bridge.”

  “No!” shouted Hadewych.

  (WHOOOOOOOOOSSSSSHHHHH!)

  Twin fireballs raced over the water and struck the Horseman full in the chest, enveloping him, burning him away, burning horse and rider both, burning them to nothing.

  “Stop!” Jason cried.

  “He belongs to me!” Hadewych shouted. “He’s my birthright!” He poured on the flames, sending them roaring across the river, until the Horseman vanished into cinders and smoke.

  “It’s over!” Jason cried, standing. “Let it go! He’ll re-form, you idiot! I can do it again.” Jason bent, reaching for the skull.

  “Not if you’re dead!”

  Hadewych threw fire and Jason stumbled backward, losing his balance, hitting his head as he fell from the bridge and careened into the water. The hatchet came tumbling after, landing with a splash. Jason struggled to his feet, sputtering and helpless. He stood exactly where the Horseman had died, defenseless, exposed, with no escape, an easy strike. An easy kill. He grabbed the hatchet, holding it high, but that was no defense.

  “Now it’s over,” Hadewych said, bracing his feet on the stones of the opposite shore. He brought both hands together, willing one great fireball to grow, brilliant and blazing and deadly. “You know the Legend. You know how it ends. Brom wins. Ichabod loses. That’s just how the story goes.” He smiled. “Who are we to rewrite a classic?”

  He hurled the blazing missile overhand, sending it hurtling across the water, straight at Jason’s frightened face.

  (WHOOOOOOOOOSSSSSHHHHH!)

  Jason raised an arm, shielding his eyes, expecting to die, but a human figure threw itself from the shadows, arms outstretched, taking the brunt of the attack—a flash of heat and a silhouette of arms and legs, a sizzling cry of agony and a heavy splash as it fell face down in the river. HELP! PAIN! FEAR! NO! The psychic alarm was blaring, blaring. Oh, God. It was someone he loved. It was someone he loved.

  Jason blinked, seeing spots, the silhouette burned into his retinas, wondering how he’d survived, wondering who had saved him, who had traded their own life for his, who lay writhing in the river, smoldering and smoking and screaming with pain. Joey? Was it Joey? Was it Kate? Oh, God. Was it Kate? He dropped the hatchet and waded out, grabbed a fistful of shirt and flipped the body onto its back, raising a hand to illuminate the ruined features…

  Jason’s heart froze.

  It was Zef.

  His cousin lay gasping with pain, his skin peeling off, half his scalp burned away, the skin of his face flaking, his eyebrows gone. His lips were cracked and blackened. His clothes were still on fire. Jason slapped them out, crying, “No no no no!” He dragged Zef onto the shore and laid him down.

  Hadewych splashed across the river, unsteadily, the stones shifting under his feet. His eyes widened, white as the moon above. “Son?” he gasped. “Son? Oh, Zef! Zef!” He knocked Jason aside and knelt. “My baby! My baby boy!”

  “I can heal him!” Jason said, reaching out a hand.

  But Hadewy
ch was beyond reason, beyond hearing. He snarled like a cornered animal and lashed out with a fistful of rocks. Jason backed away, his shoulder pressed to the abutment, covering his face. Hadewych bent again, trembling like a moth. “Oh no,” he groaned, his voice high and pitiful. “Oh no. No, Zef. What do you need? What? Oh, God, tell me what you need. Just tell me. Anything. Anything! What can I do? What do you need from me, my baby boy?”

  Zef raised a weak hand, his breath labored. His voice was the voice of a child, the scarred child deep within the scarred young man. “I need you to be… a good man, Daddy.” He turned his face away, his back arched, and with a convulsion of pain and gritted teeth, Zef Van Brunt…

  … died.

  “Zef?” Hadewych shook the body. “Zef? No, Zef. No! No! Wake up! Wake up! Zef, wake up!”

  Someone else screamed, on the slope above, running down the hill, surfing an avalanche of dirt and shifting leaves.

  It was Joey.

  “Get back!” Hadewych shouted, raising a flaming hand.

  Joey’s legs went out from under him and he fell, his eyes brimming with fire and fear. “What happened? What happened?”

  “Get back, you faggot!”

  “Is Zef—Is Zef—”

  “He’s dead! And it’s your fault!”

  “Mine?”

  “You got him into this!”

  Joey covered his face. “I didn’t—I didn’t do anything! I loved—”

  “Don’t you dare!” Hadewych bent backward and whined at the sky. “Zef was a good boy!”

  Kate came running down the slope now, falling to Joey’s side. Jason’s heart leapt to see her safe and free of Agathe’s control. “Oh, God,” she blurted. “Not Zef. Not Zef. Oh, please not Zef.”

  Joey buried his face in her shoulder. Jason climbed up to his friends, gathering both of them, holding them tight, fighting back his own sobs of grief.

  Hadewych’s moans were high and painful to hear. “He was a good boy… My good boy. And I was… Oh, God. I was…”