“But thank you for getting us this far,” Henry quickly recoiled. “We can handle it from here.” He then added softly, “I hope.”
Henry went over and helped Catharine down from Wesseling’s horse. With a crooked grin, Wesseling’s eyes seemed to trace the outline of Catharine’s frame as she dropped to the ground. Watching the man’s lingering gaze, Henry firmly held Catharine’s arm. But she shrugged out of his grip with an annoyed frown, unaware of what was causing Henry’s sudden intensity.
“Is there something the matter?” Wesseling asked as Henry continued to glare. But before Henry could reply, Catharine had latched onto his hand and tugged him away.
“I’m not fond of how Wesseling leers at you,” Henry whispered as the pair passed through the gated entrance.
“Oh, Henry, really,” Catharine scoffed as she trudged through the snowy path, her hand still intertwined in Henry’s. “Of all the things to get flustered about now. Don’t you think we have greater things to focus on than Wesseling’s unbecoming stares?”
“I’m just trying to protect you,” Henry said haughtily, releasing Catharine’s hand with an exaggerated yank of his wrist.
Catharine rolled her eyes. “Your assignment tonight is not to be my protector.”
Her prickly tone caught Henry off guard just as he stepped onto snowy tracks left by carriage wheels. Unable to soundly plant his feet, Henry clumsily stumbled to the ground, nearly taking Catharine down with him.
Catharine spun around and looked at Henry, her mouth curling into a smile. “Some protector,” she said in a low voice.
But before Henry could stand back up, a familiar purple sphere came floating through the trees and hovered near his spread legs.
A sugarplum.
Henry plucked it out of the air and hesitantly placed it between his lips while Catharine eyed him closely. After a few chews, Henry’s face lit up. “It’s Maggie.”
“What about Maggie?” Catharine exclaimed. “Has something happened to her?”
Henry shook his head. “She’s returning to Chelsea Manor in search of the key. And we’re to retrieve her there when the steamboat heads back to Poppel.”
Catharine let out a relieved sigh, but her face was still heavy with concern.
“Maggie will be okay,” Henry said. But Catharine’s eyes narrowed at his reassuring tone.
“How do you know?” Catharine snapped. “I don’t think any of us really understood how grave the situation had become. We just saw men slaughtered like animals. You could barely keep from heaving at the sight of the dead bodies.”
Henry looked away, embarrassed. “I had never seen death like that before,” he mumbled, his face flushing in the chilly winter air. “I had never seen death until my father passed away. And those dead men reminded me of that. He’s really all I ever think about. I don’t think seeing him die will ever leave me.”
Catharine’s features softened. “No, it doesn’t ever leave you. I witnessed my mother’s death. And I was only a year old.”
Henry turned back to Catharine. “And you still remember?”
Catharine nodded. “I never talk about those memories. But I have them. My family believes I recall nothing of that time. My mother became ill rather suddenly. And I was forbidden from her bedroom on her final day of life. That has stayed with me for the past seventeen years.”
Unexpectedly, the clouds that had been covering the moon parted. And the moon’s fresh light illuminated a path containing deeply carved carriage tracks that branched off from the main road.
“It must lead to the Manor,” Catharine whispered, helping Henry to his feet and guiding him toward the path.
The tree-lined trail curved up a hill and soon Catharine and Henry spotted Van Cortlandt Manor. The two-story rectangle building was made of red and yellow bricks that varied in size and shape, adding quaintness to the rather charming home. Its low snow-covered rooftop drooped over the white picket porch that wrapped around the second story. A wide staircase on the front of the house came down from the porch and then split into two separate stairways going opposite directions. Their rails were draped in sagging garland.
Catharine and Henry carefully approached the Manor as the hard snow crunched beneath their feet. Although the outside of the house had a warm and welcoming quality, the paned windows were dark and foreboding.
But then a galloping horse sounded in the distance.
Henry’s back stiffened as he glanced around. “What’s that?”
“It’s probably Albers or Wesseling, going to guard a different entrance,” Catharine whispered and then pointed to the porch. “We need to see if anyone’s inside. You check the second floor and I’ll look below.”
Henry watched Catharine disappear into the shadows under the porch before he turned toward the front stairs. His feet froze at their base, but then an ominous breeze, funneling through the nearby trees, propelled him up the porch steps. Also, the muffled sounds of Catharine moving below strangely gave Henry a great deal of comfort.
Henry pressed his forehead against a window and squinted through the cold glass. An empty dining room appeared on the other side of the wall. Any dishes from a possible Christmas Eve dinner had been cleared from the table. Nothing inside stirred.
Not even a mouse.
Henry crossed to the other end of the porch and looked through the windows of what appeared to be the parlor. But seeing nothing of interest, Henry turned the corner and moved to the side of the house. The last window belonged to a small bedroom. Henry was surprised its two beds were empty, since the sheets and blankets were strewn about as though they’d been recently slept in.
Stepping back from the window, Henry listened for Catharine’s footsteps under the porch. But his ears were met with silence. Bending down, Henry tried to see if there was any sign of Catharine between the wooden planks. But a glow in the window he had just been looking through caught his eye and he glanced up to find a face staring directly back at him.
Henry stifled a scream and fell backward onto the porch.
The glow was actually the pale skin of a dark haired boy peering out the window. The boy seemed unaffected by Henry’s presence as he continued to blankly stare. Henry watched closely, expecting the young boy to go running to his parents at any moment. But the boy didn’t flinch.
Gently getting up from the ground, Henry slowly walked to the window. The boy’s eyes were fixed on him the entire time. Reaching out to the window, Henry placed his hand carefully on the glass above the boy’s head.
“Hello,” Henry whispered. But by the time his breath had faintly fogged the window, the boy had already disappeared into the shadows of Van Cortlandt Manor.
Catharine crept along the bottom of the Manor, peering into the windows of the main floor. There was a kitchen, back chambers, and a couple of windows with their curtains drawn. But when Catharine finally came out from below the porch, she noticed that the Van Cortlandt Manor front door was now ajar.
Thinking that Henry had gone into the house, Catharine began to whisper his name, but then stopped. She didn’t know who could be listening. Instead she cautiously climbed the porch stairs and peeked through the entrance. There was an empty hall with a door on its right wall, leading to a parlor, and a door to the dining room on the left.
Catharine hesitantly tiptoed inside.
“Who are you?”
The chilling voice came from a young boy standing at the end of the hallway. Rather than being frightened, the boy’s voice was forceful with an air of authority.
Catharine glanced at the boy who returned a somber stare, not breaking eye contact for even a moment. His hair was dark and curly, and he looked harmless enough; dressed head to toe in an oversized, baggy cotton shirt that stretched down to his ankles.
“Don’t be afraid,” Catharine whispered soothingly.
“I’m not afraid,” the boy replied with his hands innocently clasped across his belly.
His tone caused Catharine to shift be
tween feet with unease.
“I’m a distant relative. And I’m looking for something that belongs to our family,” Catharine gently explained.
The boy didn’t reply, but a smirk formed on his mouth.
There was a sound of footsteps running along the porch outside. Catharine spun around just as Henry burst through the front door.
“Catharine,” he said, exhaling rather loudly. “A boy…”
Henry trailed off when he saw the child standing behind Catharine.
“What about him?” Catharine whispered.
“No, not this boy,” Henry said. “I saw another boy who looks very similar. But he vanished.”
Catharine glanced back at the peculiar boy, realizing that there was more than one child awake in Van Cortlandt Manor.
Henry cautiously approached the child. “Who are you?”
The boy’s smile disappeared. “Romeyn.” He then added simply, “You’re here for the wheel.”
Henry and Catharine exchanged surprised looks.
“How do you know that?” Henry straightened his back.
Romeyn was silent, but two other young voices chimed in.
“Bels told us.”
Henry and Catharine turned around to see two more boys who looked similar to Romeyn. One stood in the parlor’s doorway and the other in the dining room.
“Who’s Bels?” Catharine asked. “And who are you two?”
“My brothers.” Romeyn nodded to the boy who was a little shorter than him. “James.” Then walking over and gripping the shoulder of the shortest boy, Romeyn added, “And Theodoric.”
“Uh, would you boys be able to help us?” Henry stammered. “We don’t want to wake the rest of the household.”
Romeyn, James, and Theodoric’s nearly identical faces lit up for the first time. But it wasn’t a comforting sight. Catharine sensed that something was quite off with the children.
“Who is Bels?” Catharine asked again.
“Bels is our friend,” Theodoric squealed.
“Well, how does this friend know about the Sister Wheel?” Henry asked, bending down to Theodoric’s level. “And where does Bels say the wheel is?”
All three boys jerked a finger up to their lips and sharply hissed, “Shh.” Then they whispered together like a chorus, “We know where to find the wheel.”
“Henry,” Catharine said, touching his arm with her hand. “I don’t like this.” She spoke as though the three boys weren’t there.
But Henry pressed on. “Where’s the wheel?”
The boys laughed and then scampered around in a circle.
“In the orchard.”
“With Bels.”
“In the orchard with Bels.”
Then dropping to their knees, the boys scampered down the hallway and finally out the front door of Van Cortlandt Manor.
Henry started after them, but Catharine held him back. She didn’t say anything, but she wore a troubled expression.
“What other choice do we have, Catharine?” Henry said, breaking away from her and running out of the Manor after the boys.
Catharine tentatively followed, trying to prepare for whatever awaited them in the orchard.
When the Furnace Brook men finally reached Van Cortlandt Manor, Albers and Wesseling were still waiting near its entrance gate.
“What is it?” Albers immediately asked, riding over to meet them.
“There was another Garrison hiding on the steamboat,” Boe exclaimed. “He rode after you. But we lost sight of him halfway here.”
“We haven’t seen anything,” Wesseling said. “Was he armed?”
“He didn’t appear to be,” Boe replied, pulling the brim of his hat down.
“Send some of your men back to the steamboat. Have them bring it this way,” Albers directed. “We’ll patrol the perimeter of the estate. He shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
“Garrisons are cowards and rarely act alone,” Wesseling added. “He was probably just fleeing the area, not wanting to risk the same fate as the others.”
But McNutt was closer than anyone knew.
Less than a mile away on the other end of the Van Cortlandt property, McNutt had finally come to a halt. He had ridden to the Croton River, running along the east side of the estate. It was there McNutt found an abandoned ferry house.
Shivering, McNutt tied up the horse on a fence post and hurried into the desolate building. His wet clothes were frozen to his body and he trembled violently. But McNutt was able to scrounge up a pair of well-worn trousers and a dry shirt in a neglected storeroom.
Catharine and Henry were no doubt in Van Cortlandt Manor by this time. But McNutt planned to cut them off before they met up with the Furnace Brook men again. Now he just had to watch and wait.
After warming his body and dumping the frozen Garrison clothes in a sack, McNutt returned to his horse. He almost hoped that the two descendants had been able to recover the Sister Wheel. It would make their inevitable capture by McNutt an even greater accomplishment to the other Garrisons at Poppel.
“Romeyn,” Henry called. “James! Theodoric!”
The boys had run far ahead of Henry, and as he stood on the edge of the orchard that was packed with rows of bare trees, he could no longer spot them.
Then someone rushed up behind him. Henry jumped, but let out a relieved sigh when it turned out to be Catharine.
“Where did they go?” she huffed, out of breath.
A chorus of giggling voices floated throughout the trees before Henry could reply. Never had children’s laughter sounded so menacing.
Henry gripped Catharine’s hand tightly, more to calm his own nerves than to offer her any comfort. Together they walked through the orchard, looking around for the brothers.
“Romeyn,” Henry tried again.
But just as swiftly as the giggling began, it stopped. Instead a chilly silence swept through the trees.
“Boys, come out right now,” Catharine ordered.
Before Catharine could call again, a figure appeared a few rows away. Henry turned his head and immediately locked eyes with one of the boys. Henry and Catharine ran toward him, but as they neared, the boy shot through the trees and disappeared again.
“Stop!” Catharine shouted. “Come back.”
“Where’s the Sister Wheel?” Henry called.
Then the young voices returned.
“Jingle bells, jingle bells. Jingle all the way.”
The boys sang the familiar verse over and over again until their voices seemed to completely surround Henry and Catharine. Finally, the children popped up in the distance between the orchard trees.
Henry and Catharine watched carefully, but the boys didn’t move. They stood barefoot on the snow wearing only their wispy nightshirts, looking at their visitors through the gray trees.
“We have the Sister Wheel,” James announced.
Henry and Catharine slowly approached the children, expecting them to take off any moment. But they remained in place until Henry and Catharine were standing right in front of them.
The youngest, Theodoric, stuck out a small fist.
Henry reached his hand out and Theodoric dropped a familiar golden wheel into his palm. Then the boys scattered, leaving Henry and Catharine feeling more unnerved than relieved that they were finally in possession of the Sister Wheel.
And then they heard it.
Bells.
It wasn’t like the mighty church bells that boomed through the city on Sunday mornings, or the crisp tinkling of tiny silver bells that accompanied carolers. The clinking of chains and rattling of rusty bells sounded through the air as though a deathly procession marched right toward them.
A strong wind whipped through the orchard, kicking snow from the tree branches down at Henry and Catharine. After a moment of no visibility, Henry realized there was more than wind in the trees. They watched as a dark shadow bounded from branch to branch. The figure’s face was hidden, except for a pair of yellow eyes and two horn-lik
e structures that stuck out of its head. The rest of its body appeared thick and hairy like a wild animal. But its movement resembled a human―an incredibly strong human.
As the creature moved through the trees, the bells and chains wrapped around its body sang out mercilessly.
Catharine clutched Henry’s shoulder. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Henry mumbled, slipping the Sister Wheel into his jacket’s breast pocket.
But Henry’s shaking hand missed the pocket and the wheel tumbled to the ground. As soon as it landed on the snowy earth, the creature in the trees stopped moving. The Sister Wheel’s shiny appearance against the white backdrop had caught its attention. With a deep growl, the creature launched itself from the tree, pouncing down on Henry in lightning speed. Catharine let out a scream as the creature slashed and gnashed its sharp claws and fangs at Henry’s clothes and skin.
Catharine looked around for something to fight the beast away, but all she saw was a broken branch barely hanging onto a tree. Catharine gripped the rough bark and pulled on the branch, trying to break it free. After a couple swift kicks, the branch loosened enough for her to pull it off.
Hoisting the large branch in her arms, Catharine turned toward the creature that was still mauling Henry. She thrust the branch at its hairy body. Although no damage was done, it was enough to distract the creature and allow Henry the chance to roll away.
Henry’s clothes were torn, revealing scratches on his arms and chest that oozed blood, dotting the snow like wilting rose petals. But he had managed to protect his head and face.
Catharine and Henry could fully see the creature now. It was human in shape, but taller than the average man. Its hairy body was grayish white except for the head, which was as bald and bony as a skull. A pointy nose jutted out of the face while two brown horns twisted up from the head. Between the creature’s sharp teeth, a long tongue stretched far from the mouth, whipping about like a black leathery rope.
The tree branch could only distract the creature so long before it looked ready to pounce again; its chains and bells drummed off its body, signaling the next attack. But the sound of galloping hooves stopped the creature in its tracks.
Krampus: The Three Sisters (The Krampus Chronicles Book 1) Page 15