Headless

  “What are you doing!?” She screamed out, as she fell to the ground, and tried to dig her heels into the ground.

  She felt bushes and tree branches dig at her, as he drug her along, her hair ripping and pulling at her scalp. Katerina cried out, but she was simply too exhausted to put up much of a fight. When they got far enough away into the trees, the old Sheriff let go of her hair, and pulled his pistol from his holster cocking the gun. She let go of her hair, tears filling her eyes, and put up her hands, crying.

  “Please. I don't understand!” she whimpered.

  “Nobody gets out of there alive, girl. Why do you think I sent you and your friends down that way? The Horseman is owed his body count, as recompense for what the town did. What our ancestors did. It's unfortunate Old Mr. Jenkins ended up in there, but – he was senile and had old timers anyways. Then of course there was my deputy. But he didn't have anyone close, so no real loss there. And your foolish college friends. I'd say that's enough to send the Horseman back to hell content for another year.”

  She couldn't believe what he was saying. The locals knew, and they hid it. Even offered up victims. What sort of sick fucks were these, that they would send a bunch of kids to die?

  “Just one thing I'm not sure on, is how you actually stopped the thing? It was already headless, so how did cutting off your friend's head help?”

  “I didn't just cut its head off. I dropped a fucking van on it.” She swore defiantly, turning to look at the old Sherriff. If she was going to go out, she was going to go out with her head held high. “I did what the rest of you couldn't do. I killed the Headless Horseman.”

  The gunshot rang out through the trees. She never had a chance to close her eyes as skull, cartilage, brain and blood splatter across the forest floor. All of that fighting; all the running; the surviving. And she was gunned down by a cop, on her knees, like an animal.

  After a few moments pass, the Sheriff emerges from the tree line, back towards his car. He pulls a flask from his pocket, and takes a long drink, before reaching in the passenger side door, and pulling out the CB mic.

  “Judd? Judd, you out there? It's Sheriff Williams.”

  No answer.

  “Judd, you fuck, get out of bed, and answer the damn radio, I know you leave the thing on!”

  “Yeah, yeah, what is it, Sheriff?”

  “I want you to get down to the bridge. Seems we've got a mess to clean up from last night. I'll meet you down there in about an hour, alright?”

  “You got it, Sheriff.”

  The old man hung up the CB and closed the passenger door. He took one more look back in the woods where he left Kat's body. He takes one more swig from the flask, and walks around getting in the patrol car and driving off.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  Judd's truck flew down the road, billowing up dirt as it sped along. He threw back a small bottle of whiskey, as he swerved and laughed at the dangerous driving habits. The damn errand boy, that's all he was. Well, if he had to clean up this town's mess every year, he was certainly going to have a good time doing it.

  “Sheriff thinks ol' Judd's just a little bitch. No sir! No sir, I'm not!” Judd yells to himself in the hand mirror he has duck taped to the window to replace what at one point, was his rearview mirror. “Every year it's the same shit. Hey Judd, go on down and clean up these college kids' cars; grab this rental van that some dumb family was driving on their weekend vacation. When's Judd get a vacation!?”

  The truck swerved. A squirrel sitting at the edge of the road never saw it coming, as the large tires of the tow truck bounced over it, and Judd hooted and hollered out of the driver's side window, raising his bottle of whiskey to the blood stain he had left on the edge of the road. His black, yellow, and missing teeth shown widely as the squirrel's sacrifice brought a glimmer of pleasure to his otherwise dull day.

  When Halloween had passed, it always seemed like winter moved in automatically. Everything went from the vibrant fall colors just the day before, to a frigid, grey morning. Everything had lost its luster, and the warmth of the year seemed truly gone. One would regularly argue this started to happen by Labor Day on the East Coast. The alcohol in his system didn't help, as not only was everything losing its color, but seemed extra blurry as well.

  “Really need to buy some damn glasses,” Judd grumbles, shaking his head and smacking himself in the temple, repeatedly.

  He flies past the old Sleepy Hollow sign, leaving it in the dust.

  The truck rolled to a stop at what was left of the bridge to the old town. The transmission cranked into park, and Judd took one more swig from his bottle of whiskey, before throwing it in the passenger seat. He climbs out of the truck and looks back at the turn off for the road, noting the cop car. Nobody was going to come around asking about an empty cop car, that was for certain.

  He turned his attention to Ray's car, and the old beater that Mrs. Jenkins' must have drove up from the gas station. So Sheriff Williams told her what happened to Old Mr. Jenkins, after all? Poor lady. If she wound up over the bridge, he knew for sure she wasn't walking around anymore, either. Maybe he'd nix the tow truck business and take over the gas station. They'd need someone for that job now.

  “Damn old folks have been around here for decades and still don't know well enough to keep their asses on this side of the bridge,” Judd shook his head, turning his attention to the bridge itself.

  Splintered wood hangs from the edges, as more of the old construct had fallen throughout the night. Judd strolls to the ledge, overlooking the ravine, and peers over it. The van sits at the bottom, with wood covering it. Various sex toys lie scattered around the accident. Caleb's severed arm lays on the roof of the van. The massive mess is so loud, it sits half way out of the water, as it rushes around.

  “Damn. The Horseman had a rough go of this one,” Judd whispers, squatting down to get a better look.

  He spots the rest of Caleb's body tangled up in roots along the wall. This was a mess unlike anything he'd ever seen. The van fell through the bridge, obviously, but was the fat fuck that hung there dismembered the one who almost survived? Did the Horseman almost miss one and the bridge itself got him? Hard to call in this mess, and of course the Sheriff wouldn't tell anyone anything, even if he knew.

  “Twenty some-odd years of cleaning this shit up, and it ain't never been this bad,” Judd notes to himself, and pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, standing upright, and lights one, taking a long drag. “How the hell am I supposed to get that fucking thing out of this hole? Stick it up my ass and climb out on the vines?”

  Judd makes his way back to the tow truck, and backs it up to Ray's car. He'd deal with cleaning up the mess in the ravine after he got these other cars out of here. He slammed the truck door shut, and walks back to the sling, lowering it. A loud banging echoes through the air, even over the sound of the sling, and he stops, looking around.

  “The fuck?”

  He notices it coming from the ravine, and makes his way to the edge of it slowly, peering down into the large gap. The back door flies off the van, and the Horseman steps out, carrying Dougie's head. It raises the head to his shoulders and again the black ooze that makes up it's form seeps around the neck, and the lifeless head twitches to some sort of life. The Hessian blinks a couple times, and cracks his neck before looking around. Judd watches as the Horseman finds his axe and lifts it up, examining it.

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Judd groans in disbelief.

  To his knowledge, none of the townsfolk had ever seen the Horseman and lived to tell about it. And that's when he noticed the mercenary was glaring up at him. Judd's eyes go wide, before he begins laughing. The Horseman can't leave Sleepy Hollow. Everyone knew that. As soon as you crossed the bridge you were safe. Judd dances a little jig, before throwing up two middle fingers directed at the Horseman.

  “Sucks to be you, demon fucker! You can't touch me!”

  As the drunk tow truck operator laughed at the monster stuc
k down in the water, he never noticed the axe spinning through the air. He did, however, know when the weapon stuck between his eyes.

  His eyes cross as he looks at the blade stuck in his skull. He reaches up, and grabs the handle, falling forward down the ravine. His body cracks, and crunches against the ground below. The Horseman wades to Judd's body, grabbing the handle of the axe, and ripping it from the dead worker's skull. He then turns his attention back towards the wall on the Sleepy Hollow side, and wades over to it, putting its axe at his waist, grabbing a handful of vines, and pulling itself up.

  For two centuries the Horseman would have had to wait three-hundred and sixty-four more days to come out to play again. And as the Horseman moved inch by inch up the wall, the dark clouds rolled in. Lightning crashing in the distance.

  THE END.