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

by Gleaves, Richard

  “You were a bastard!” Kate shouted. “You always were a bastard!”

  “No!” Hadewych shouted, offended. “No. I was…”

  “You were a bastard,” cried Joey.

  “No. It wasn’t… me.” Hadewych fell on Zef and pressed his cheek to the breathless chest, hands high, afraid to touch him. “I was a good daddy. I—”

  “You were a bastard,” said Jason. “You’ve killed your son. You did this. No one else. You.”

  “No. No. It wasn’t me… was it?” Hadewych shot to his feet, his face blank and terrified. He stood motionless as the water beat around his legs. Jason knew what was going on in the man’s head. All of Hadewych’s illusions had dropped away. His evasions and pretenses. He was staring at the fallen body of his son… but he was seeing himself.

  He was looking beneath.

  Hadewych was down in the cellar again. The cellar of Gory Brook. Holding the little jacket, the little fringed Davy Crockett jacket. The one Zef had worn on their only trip to Disneyland. Back when life was good. Back when Daddy had an honest job, a loving wife, and a bonus to spend on Mickey Mouse. Just enough money for airfare and ice cream, a park pass for each, and two nights at the Hyatt. It hadn’t been much of a trip, heaven knows, but Zef had had the time of his sweet little life. Pinocchio patted him on the head and he saw his first gator, to his endless delight. They ate lunch at the Sleepy Hollow Café, a quaint little open-air place—step-gabled to look like Irving’s Sunnyside—in a cobblestoned corner of Liberty Square. Jessica took Hadewych’s hand, and Zef climbed onto his knee. They shared a large Coke and a bag of Sun Chips, under a cloudless sky, in sight of Cinderella’s Magic Castle.

  “This was the best trip ever, Daddy! You are The Best Daddy Ever!”

  Just a few dollars, that’s all it took. Not a hundred and twelve million. Not a stolen fortune. Not an old house, or a family foundation, or a kilo bar of gold. Just… a few hours’ overtime, a little extra effort sweeping the factory floor, and he’d been The Best Daddy Ever…

  Tears came. Night fell and the cellar disappeared. The sky turned black again. He stood in a river of cold, cold gasoline…

  “It was me,” Hadewych whispered.

  You deserve everything that’s coming to you…

  Hadewych faced Joey. “My son loved you. And I tried to burn you alive…”

  Joey turned away, and wept on Kate’s shoulder.

  You deserve everything that’s coming to you…

  He faced Kate. “You were Zef’s best friend. And I let Agathe take you.”

  Kate whispered, “Yes.”

  He faced Jason Crane. “And you. I killed your grandmother.”

  “I know,” Jason said, simply.

  Hadewych felt small and lost and surrounded by trash. His tongue found his shattered front teeth. “She was your… Oma. And I took her away.” He saw himself in Jason, for the first time. He missed his old Oma, terribly. His own old woman, well-loved, irreplaceable. What would he give to bring her back? How much grief had he caused Jason Crane?

  You deserve everything that’s coming to you…

  “It was me,” said Hadewych. “It was all… me. Wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Jason stood, meeting Hadewych’s eye, his shadow tall against the bridge, black as the robes of a judge passing sentence. His voice was soft but implacable. “Think about what you’ve done, young man.”

  Hadewych saw a blinding light—like a blast of x-rays etching the black bones within him. He had ruined everything. Burned everything. He stood in that cellar with Zef’s little jacket in his hands. He’d burned it up, along with all the pictures, all the good memories. His son was gone. Their home was gone. His chances at redemption. All gone. All lost. Limp and charred, sleeves dangling lifelessly. He’d burned away the child inside. He’d burned his baby boy to ash, leaving behind this soft and weightless husk…

  He threw his head back and screamed. “IT WAS ME! IT WAS ME! I KILLED MY BOY!” He lit his hands, and with that final spark, the guilt and gasoline caught at last, his tears ignited, and Hadewych Van Brunt…

  … burst into flame.

  His Gift turned against him. His fingernails blackened, blisters raced up his arms, the sleeves of his dress shirt charred. He screamed and batted the flames. He threw himself into the water, but the fire burned endlessly. It burned from within him. It needed no oxygen. It needed no wood. His own evil kindled it. His past choices stoked it. He flailed and turned a circle. He ran for shore, past the body of his son, past Jason and Joey and Kate. He couldn’t stand their eyes on him. He couldn’t bear to be seen. He ran uphill, found a clearing in the woods, threw himself down, into a pile of dead leaves, rolling, trying to put himself out, but the leaves didn’t burn. The woods didn’t burn. The world didn’t burn. Only he did.

  He’d left his boy behind. His dead boy. His good boy.

  I’ve killed my Zef! I’ve killed my Zef!

  Oh, what have I done?

  I’ve killed my Zef!

  Everything was me! It’s all been me! All the time!

  His clothes burned from his body. His shoes fell from his feet. He ran from the fire, but the fire was on him. The fire was in him. The fire was him. Consuming him. It raced up his spine, the flesh burning and splitting. It blasted his cheeks, and his tears turned to steam as his eyelashes caught. The flames took his eyebrows. The flames took his hair and he ran, and he ran, and he ran… trailing a tendril of sweet-smelling char, waving his arms and screaming, “IT WAS ME! IT WAS ME!”

  His feet found the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail, that great Van Brunt water-work. But he found no water to quench his fire. Those waters were buried beneath the earth, as unreachable as the Horseman’s Treasure had been, as unreachable as his mother and his father and his poor sweet Oma. As his boy would be now. Hadewych found only an endless empty road, two ruts converging toward a distant black abyss. He ran for that abyss. He ran for the comfort of that abyss. But it receded, no matter how hard he ran. The light of his fire denied him that cold darkness. He ran past the cemetery annex, where his victim Eliza Merrick lay. He ran and he ran, as the flames took everything he had… His son, his wife, his house, his skin, his fine Armani suit, his toothpaste-commercial smile, his head of blond hair, and his hateful spiteful life…

  “IT WAS ME! IT WAS ME!”

  He ran and he ran. But he couldn’t escape. We can never escape ourselves, can we? Never. Not in the end. Hadewych Van Brunt ran for the abyss, finding no shortcuts, no shortcuts at all, pursued by a monster, the monster he’d let himself become, and his own inextinguishable conscience was the torch that lit his way to hell.

  Jason fell to Zef’s side, his legs in the water and his knees in mud.

  “Is he? Is he? Is he?” said Joey, tears falling as he, too, bent. He looked desolate and destroyed and terrified that the world might have such an outcome to offer. He reached for Zef, afraid to touch him, afraid he never would again.

  Kate searched out the artery in Zef’s neck, holding fingers there with expert pressure. “He is. Oh, God. He is.” She ran her fingers through the remains of Zef’s blond hair. “He’s gone.”

  Joey’s fingers dug into Jason’s bicep, painfully. “No.”

  Jason felt helpless and miserable. “I’m sorry.”

  “No! No. Bring him back.”

  Jason blinked. “I… can’t.”

  “Bring him back, or… or I’ll beat the shit out of you.” Joey raised a fist. The ground trembled. Joey was serious. “I want a happy ending. I deserve a happy ending. As much as anybody else on this planet. And you are going to cough one up. Right now. Or what good is magic? What freaking good is it?”

  “Let go!” Jason said, feeling cornered. “I can’t do it. You heard Valerie. No one can raise the dead!”

  Joey shook him. “Have you ever tried?”

  Jason looked at his hands. They pulsed with magic, brighter than ever. And he did feel… a tingle in his stomach, one he couldn’t explain.

  “Try,
” said Kate, wiping her cheeks. “What can it hurt?”

  Jason looked down at the dead body of Zef Van Brunt. He pictured the eyes opening, blank and hungry, a revenant with a hunger for human flesh, zombie-Redcoat Zef, the mate of zombie-Redcoat Joey.

  “What if it went wrong? What if he came back wrong? Like… Frankenstein’s monster?”

  “Then I’ll put him down myself,” said Joey, his voice firm. Jason and Kate glanced at each other, and then at Joey, who sniffed and said, “I will.”

  “I think you can do this,” said Kate, slipping an arm around Jason’s back, bringing her lips to his ear. “Gunsmoke was dead. You know he was.”

  Jason wasn’t sure of that. Besides, Zef was a person, not an animal…

  He turned to Joey. “I wouldn’t do this for anybody else.”

  “I know,” said Joey, nodding. “He’s your cousin.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I’m scared shitless, man. But I’ll try. For my best friend.”

  Joey’s face screwed up, and he nodded, unable to speak.

  “We need to hurry, Jason,” whispered Kate.

  Jason closed his eyes and pressed his palms to Zef’s chest. Come on, Zef. He tried to picture his cousin alive, happy, healthy. He pictured him as he’d been the first time he’d seen him. In a maroon hoodie and black tank top, the night of the Spirit Dance. He flinched from a bad memory—the lighthouse, the fight… (“I’ll open your veins!”) He found New Year’s, and got no help there—the threats, punching Joey… (“Get off me, you dirty fag!”) Did he have no good memory of Zef? No good memory to hold on to, no happy memory to restore?

  “Are you trying?” said Joey.

  “Yes!” Jason growled. “I’m doing what I can.” He bent, concentrating. “I don’t know if he’s even in here. It’s like he’s dark to me!” But then he pictured Zef and Joey, sitting in the music room together, blushing and affectionate. All that mattered was that Zef made Joey happy. All the rest was past. Come back, Zef. Joey’s here. Joey needs a happy ending.

  He felt a twitch. Not from his psychometric Gift, not from his Crane ability. This was a twitch on his Pyncheon side, a little telepathic spark—linking up with his cousin, somewhere… in the ether, in the night… a whisper of psychic energy between them, some little handshake between their brain cells.

  “I feel him,” Jason whispered. “But it’s faint.”

  Kate bent to Zef. “Fight, please.”

  Jason took his hands away. They were glowing brighter than ever, but why?

  “The water!”

  The magic waters of the Pocantico had fed Agathe’s power. He had swallowed stomachfuls of it all night. It was fueling him—changing him. He bent and drank, scooping water from the river, his hands casting undulating ripples of light on the branches above. He drank deep and felt his power grow, felt it surge. He could do this. He would do this.

  He slapped his hands to Zef’s body again, like two paddles on a heart patient. He felt the magic filling him. His hands became hot and bright and burning. “Come on, Zef! Come on, cousin! Joey’s waiting! Kate’s waiting!” His hands fused to the flesh. “Come on! Come back! They need you. I need you. We have a long way to go together. So get your ass back in your body, you son of a bitch!”

  A firefly winked high above them, watching.

  Streaks of light broke across the stars.

  Jason’s hands glowed purple, then red and orange, yellow and green and blue. The river glowed in sympathy, throwing garish shadows all around.

  And something in Jason… ripped wide.

  Zef’s back arched. His hands became fists and he left the ground, as if levitating in a magician’s act. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Zef’s clothes knit themselves together. His ravaged skin grew back, the scars and burns vanished from his neck, his throat, his face. His features were restored. His body broke away from Jason’s touch and fell limply to the ground.

  Kate looked at Jason, her face sad. He’d only restored Zef’s body, hadn’t he? He couldn’t connect the two parts—the body and the soul. He’d only made Zef a better-looking corpse. It was an embalming job, that was all. McCaffrey would have been proud.

  “This always works in stories,” said Joey. He bent, whispered something in Zef’s ear, and kissed him.

  The firefly above dove down into Zef’s chest. Suddenly Jason heard his cousin’s thoughts loud and clear, saying “I love you too!” Zef woke, sitting up too quickly, knocking foreheads with Joey.

  “Ow!” cried Zef, rubbing the spot.

  “Ow!” cried Joey, shaking his head and blinking stars away.

  Zef coughed and sputtered. “What the hell? What—”

  Jason started to shiver, staring at his hands. He had done it. Kate saw his expression and held him, even as Joey took Zef in his own arms, kissing his hair and crying.

  Zef looked around, remembering where he was. “What happened? What happened to my dad?” His eyes met Jason’s.

  “He… burned away,” Jason whispered. “When he saw that he had…”

  “Killed me,” Zef said, touching his own face.

  “His guilt turned his Gift around and… he’s gone, man. He couldn’t have survived. I’m sorry.” The strange thing was, Jason was sorry. Zef had deserved a better dad.

  Zef’s eyes filled with tears. He leaned against Joey, but he didn’t sob. He just stared at the water, as if the river was washing something sad away. “He… earned it, I guess.” Then the tears broke and the sobs began.

  Kate shot to her feet. “Jason.”

  Above them, on the eastern abutment of the broken bridge, the Headless Horseman had re-formed. The hatchet flew into his hand. All four kids lurched away, splashing into the water, expecting the Monster to strike.

  “Run,” said Kate, grabbing Jason’s arm.

  “No.” Jason raised a hand. “Just stay calm.”

  “Stay calm?” Kate’s eyes grew wide and bewildered.

  “Everybody stay calm.”

  Jason climbed onto shore, up the slope, and gained the bridge. He stood defenseless before the Horseman. The skull at his feet still glowed, and it still bore a splash of his blood.

  “What are you doing?” cried Zef.

  Jason turned to look at his friends. “I’m the seventh generation, the end of the line. The last Crane. Only I can give him what he wants.”

  “You can’t let him kill you,” said Joey, his eyes wide.

  “Trust me.” Jason turned, reached out a hand, and touched the snout of the horse, stroking it, feeling the prickle of the dead leaves, cold and wet. The horse looked at him with wild snail-shell eyes. “Easy,” Jason said. “Easy, Mitternacht.” The leaf-horse waggled its head and nudged Jason’s shoulder with its snout, as if to sniff his blood and confirm his ancestry.

  Jason shivered all over, looking up at the Horseman. “I surrender, Johannes. See?” He raised his hands. “The war is over. It’s over, okay? Ergeben. I surrender. I surrender the bridge.” The Horseman didn’t respond, and Jason realized that the ghost might not fully understand his words. He searched his memory, for the German translations on a scrap of paper, sewn inside the diary. He’d studied those translations all spring. “Ich ergeben das Brücke. Ich bin ein Soldat… uh, of… George Washington… and… Ich ergeben das Brücke! In the name of the Continental Congress and the thirteen American states, I surrender this bridge. You win. Go home to your family.” He found the scarf in his pocket and extended it. “Margarethe’s waiting. And your son.”

  At these words, the Headless Horseman went still. He raised the hatchet slowly, and Jason steeled himself, ready for a lunge and a beheading chop. But the hatchet clattered to the stone with a sound like a blacksmith’s anvil. The Horseman’s trembling hand closed on the scarf and brought it to his heart. The horse whirled, dashed partway up the hill. It turned a circle, rose on its hind legs, and kicked the air. And then the Horseman galloped into the forest.

  “Was that a yes?” Jason blurted, calling after. He turned,
looking down at his friends.

  “Did it work?” said Kate.

  Jason shrugged. “Maybe. I… I don’t know.”

  “Something’s up,” said Joey, pointing. The skull at Jason’s feet pulsed with magic. Across the river, the reliquary shone as well. They were beacons calling to each other from opposite shores. The head of the Horseman calling to the lantern of his soul.

  An old man appeared on the far shore, on the spot where Ichabod had fallen. A ghost in old-fashioned clothes, with a watch fob in his waistcoat and a head of tousled if thinning grey hair. He put his hands in his pockets, looking across the gap with satisfaction.

  Kate stood and whispered, “Hello, Mr. Irving.”

  “Oh my God,” whispered Joey. “I thought you were kidding about that.”

  “Do you have something to tell me, sir?” said Jason, feeling helpless. “What did I get wrong?”

  Irving smiled and in a tone of quotation said, “Once you make the bridge, his power ends.”

  “Okay, so… what do I do?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Irving gave a conspiratorial wink. “You make the bridge.”

  Irving vanished. Jason broke into a smile. And at that very moment, he heard the sound of approaching hoofbeats.

  The Horseman had wanted a running start.

  Jason dropped down and pressed his palms to the cold stone of the bridge. The galloping hooves grew louder and louder, nearer and nearer. A black shape broke from the woods, hurtling forward like a midnight blast—the Horseman, arms outstretched, jubilant, his cape whipping and billowing behind, like a wave torn from a black ocean. Jason screwed up his face. Here was the bridge of Legend, the bridge of his nightmares, the bridge that the Horseman could never cross.

  “You can cross it now!” Jason cried, and with a burst of blinding energy…

  … he made the bridge.

  The old bridge was re-born, yanked out of the past. Stones that had fallen away broke from the riverbed and reattached; those lost forever were re-fashioned from boulders and fieldstones. The woods of Sleepy Hollow broke into rustic boards and nailed themselves into place. The two abutments reached for each other, giants clasping hands, and the capstone completed the arch.