SleepyHollow2BookBundle

by Ranae Rose

  “We’ll have to take another horse,” Brom said, slipping quickly into another stall and leading out his second-best horse, a sturdy bay. “Torben is out of control.” He saddled the bay, which pranced a little, clearly unnerved by Torben’s panic. The horse behaved decently as they exited the barn though, and seemed to calm down once they were outside.

  Brom heaved Katrina onto the bay’s back, behind the saddle, before climbing on himself. Katrina wrapped her arms around his waist and held on tightly as they took off. The motion of the horse’s canter caused the small crucifix she wore around her neck to bounce against her chest. John had given her the necklace when he’d still been living at the Jansens’, and had implored her to wear it for protection. She was glad she’d listened, though the cross couldn’t lessen her worry over John.

  The woods were dead-silent, and the quiet was eerie. The horseman’s scream echoed in Katrina’s mind as the wind rushed through her loose hair, combing through it like cold fingers. The horse rocked beneath her, its hooves beating a hard rhythm against the earth and their prints blending in with the tracks of other animals. The road had clearly been traveled recently by horses going at a dead run. She’d dreamt that, believed that, but seeing it for herself caused her pulse to quicken as she pressed her cheek against Brom’s back, absorbing what warmth she could.

  At last, the bridge came into view, and Katrina peered over Brom’s shoulder, straining for any sign of John. “He tumbled over the bank,” she reminded Brom, cringing as the sound of running water met her ears. Oh God, don’t let him have drowned, don’t let him have drowned… She chanted the little prayer over and over again in her mind, aware that John had taken a nasty tumble and that he might have landed in the water and sank beneath its surface, stunned by his fall.

  Brom reined the bay to a halt and leapt from the saddle, seizing Katrina by the waist and quickly lifting her, depositing her on the ground. They rushed to the bank together, and Katrina couldn’t help but hold her breath as she craned her neck to peer down at the water, her shoes slipping slightly on the damp grass.

  John was there. He lay prone in the mud, half his body in the creek. Fortunately, the water lapped around his waist, leaving his face dry. But blood shone in his hair, terribly vivid in the moonlight. Brom and Katrina scrambled down the bank together and reached him at the same time.

  Katrina pressed her fingers against his neck, praying and feeling for a sign of life. His skin was as cold as death, but a pulse fluttered against her fingertips, flooding her with warm relief. “He’s alive,” she sighed.

  Brom slid his arms beneath John and carefully scooped him up. The mud made a squelching sound, and the imprint of John’s prone body remained. How long had he lain there unconscious? Since Katrina had dreamt of him falling and woken from the nightmare? It had taken her and Brom perhaps twenty minutes to reach him. Too long. She smoothed long strands of bloody hair from his face. “He must have struck his head on something – a rock, perhaps.” The bank boasted several of them, jutting out dangerously from the soft earth.

  Brom nodded silently, and his knuckles stood out white against John’s muddy shirt as he held him close against his chest.

  Still kneeling, Katrina cupped her hands and scooped water from the nearby creek. She poured it over John’s head, letting it wash much of the blood and dirt from his face, revealing a gash just above his hairline. She drew in a sharp breath at the sight of it, but it appeared stitchable. She said so to Brom, who nodded stoically. He must have felt the same way she had at the sight of John – terribly relieved and frightened at the same time; desperate to help, and at the same time, just to touch him. Overwhelmed by the impulse, she dared to embrace him. Cold water dampened her bodice and trickled between her breasts, and blood stained her fingers, but it still felt good to hold him. After a few moments she relented, and Brom stood.

  When they made it to the top of the bank, their mount was still there, nibbling at a bit of the thinning autumn grass. Katrina hurried to pick up the reins before the horse could step on them.

  “I’ll carry him,” Brom said, nodding down at John.

  “Of course.” She walked beside Brom, leading the horse. The animal couldn’t be expected to bear the burden of three people, and she had no desire to ride ahead. Brom took long strides as they made the eerie journey through the silent forest, the shadows of bony branches slipping over them. It seemed to take a small eternity to reach home, and Katrina counted each drop of blood that welled from John’s wound, her fingers itching with the desire to stanch and bandage it. She did so immediately after they reached the house, as soon as Brom had laid John in their bed.

  “Should we fetch the physician?” Katrina asked when John lay beneath the blankets, still unconscious but stripped of his damp, muddy clothing and finally dry.

  Brom stood beside the bed, his arms crossed and his face lined with worry. “I suppose we should.”

  The physician would no doubt be perplexed by Katrina’s sudden recovery and John’s injuries – in addition to his head wound, he was covered in scrapes and bruises – but Katrina would think of a way to explain everything later. Right now, all she could think of was John. He hadn’t stirred on the way home, or even showed any signs of wakefulness as they’d undressed him and placed him in bed. Nightmarish scenarios raced through her mind, ones where John never woke up, or was permanently damaged by his fall. She clasped one of his hands within her own and squeezed, taking comfort in the fact that his skin had warmed a little. If only he’d wake.

  As if summoned to consciousness by her wish, John stirred. His hand shifted within hers, squeezing back. She peered anxiously at his face, waiting with bated breath for his eyelids to flutter open. When they did, she released the breath she’d been holding with a sigh.

  Brom sank onto the edge of the bed, leaning over John, the darkness of his eyes relieved by the light of anxious hope.

  “John, are you all right?” Katrina asked. It was perhaps a foolish question, given his head wound, his extensive collections of cuts and the dark collar of deep bruises around his neck, but she had to ask. If he had the presence of mind to answer yes or no, he was better off than she’d feared during her darkest moments of waiting by his bedside.

  He blinked, then opened his eyes wide, glancing back and forth between Brom and Katrina. “If I’m here, then I must be.” His voice was rough and rasping. He sat up awkwardly, leaning against the pillows and grimacing. “Though I feel like I did after my tussle with Dirck Acker.”

  He remembered the fight that had occurred several days ago; that was a good sign. But did he recall what had just happened? Katrina bit her lip – did she really want to hear him tell her that what she’d dreamt had actually happened?

  “Damn,” John said, touching a hand to the side of his head, exploring the bandage Katrina had fashioned from cloth strips. “What time is it?”

  “Sometime around midnight,” Katrina offered.

  John glanced toward the window, where the harvest moon hung high in the sky, and frowned. “It’s only been a few hours, then.” He turned to Brom. “What did you do – drag me from the creek?”

  “Exactly,” Brom said, fixing John with a wry look. “Do you intend to tell us how you got there? Katrina has a most interesting theory.”

  John shot Katrina an inquiring glance, but she only shrugged. She’d let John speak first. If his account matched her dream, then she’d say something. For now, she suppressed a shudder.

  John squared his shoulders and sighed. “I waited until you both fell asleep to leave,” he began, and told them how he’d saddled Torben and ridden into the woods, where he’d confronted the headless horseman. He related the struggle at the bridge, where he’d fastened one of Joshua Jansen’s homemade crucifix necklaces to the fiend’s arm, only to be knocked out of the saddle by the horseman’s severed head.

  Katrina gripped the edge of the bed tightly as she listened, fighting a lightheaded feeling and the encroaching darkness that threatene
d to invade her vision. He’d described it all exactly as it had happened in her dream, only he’d tumbled down the creek bank before the horseman had vanished completely. “He’s gone,” Katrina said. “Him and his terrible horse. I saw them disappear – in my dream, I mean.”

  John appeared surprised at first, but nodded, convinced perhaps by his own readiness to accept unnatural occurrences, or maybe by the look on her face. “Yes, I believe he’s gone too.”

  Brom had gone white in the face while listening to John recount his adventure, but his color returned rapidly, his cheeks flushing red. “Why?” he demanded. “Why in God’s name would you set out to vanquish the horseman on your own? You could easily have been killed. You should have taken me.”

  John looked as if he’d been expecting, and perhaps dreading, that very question. He kept his shoulders resolutely squared though, and looked Brom in the eye. “I brought the horseman here. I thought about it for a while, and eventually I came to the conclusion that when I tried to take my own life that night at the harvest party, he came to fetch my spirit. That’s what the legends say – some of them, anyway – that when the headless horseman stops riding, a death occurs. Well, he was cheated out of my death, and so he stayed…” John’s face was an unreadable mask, but he clutched fistfuls of the blankets. “I think he meant to take Katrina instead. I couldn’t allow that.”

  “You intended to give yourself as a sacrifice?” Brom asked, his voice nearly as rough as John’s.

  “I knew I might have to,” John said. “But I’d hoped to defeat him another way and escape. That’s why I had him chase me to the bridge, in hopes that I could cross it after fastening the crucifix to him – if the crucifix was effective.” He shrugged. “I thought it might be, after the way it saved me from him last time.” He touched the bandage that had been wound around his head. “Things didn’t go exactly as expected, but I suppose my plan was a success.” He smiled faintly at both of them.

  Brom didn’t return the expression. “That doesn’t explain why you went alone.”

  “I had to. I didn’t dare leave Katrina alone – not when she was ill, and when I knew the horseman was pursuing her.” He related another chilling tale, in which he’d seen the headless horseman ride through the air, passing by their bedroom window. “Besides, it was my fault the horseman came in the first place, and my responsibility to pay the price.”

  Brom looked as if he disagreed with John’s last statement, but reached across the bed to take one of Katrina’s hands, holding it tightly within his own. He laid his other hand on John’s, gripping it in a similar manner. “Damn it all, I’m just glad that it’s over and you’re both still alive. I feared for both of your lives more than once this night.”

  Katrina felt much the same way; she was too relieved to reprimand John, or to be anything but grateful – for him and to him, when she considered what he’d been willing to sacrifice for her. She leaned in and pressed a kiss lightly against his cheek. “I love you, John.”

  “So do I,” Brom said.

  John smiled faintly. “If you love me, then I’m sure you’ll both agree not to summon the doctor until morning. I may have confronted a fiend from Hell, but I’m in no mood to face that man and his infernal scalpels.”

  “It will only be stitches,” Katrina assured him. “We won’t let him bleed you.”

  “Even worse,” John declared.

  “We’ll wait until morning,” Brom consented, “but you’ll get the stitches then, and may you remember them next time you think about setting out to risk your neck on your own.” His words were harsh, but his eyes gleamed with humor. “Otherwise, I will let him bleed you next time.”

  “It won’t come to that,” John said. “You know me, Brom – I’d much rather be behind a book or a desk than taunting danger.”

  “So I thought, until recently.”

  Brom and John each made a few more light-hearted jibes at each other, but the real tension of the night was gone, replaced by relief and exhaustion that Katrina felt as well as saw on the men’s faces. It wasn’t long before they retired, and as she snuffed the candle, the room was plunged into the sort of darkness that she felt safe in. The only thing that rushed past the bedroom window was a light night breeze, and she didn’t need to look to know that nothing spectral galloped past the moon. There was only the innocent night, a time during which she could curl up tightly with both the men she loved and spend blissful hours between them.

  EPILOGUE

  John approached the simple headstone, which featured an uneven surface thanks to the harshness of time and the elements, but no name. It was an unmarked grave, a remnant of the war that had won the country its independence. The exact identity of its occupant was unknown, though many of the villagers insisted that a Hessian mercenary soldier lay beneath the stone, his head severed from his body by a cannonball. John would never know whether the spirit that had nearly killed him had belonged to the unfortunate corpse, but some of the villagers thought so, and anyway, that wasn’t really the point. He knelt on top of the grave, pulling a small knife from his pocket.

  It had rained just yesterday, one of those sudden and short-lived showers so common to spring, and the ground was still soft from it. The earth yielded easily to his blade, and he cut a fist-sized section of it away, carefully setting the square of turf aside before digging a few inches into the dirt with a cupped hand.

  When he’d made a sufficient hole, he pulled two objects from his waistcoat. He held them by their slim leather cords, letting the crude wooden crosses dangle in the May sunlight for a moment. Then he lowered the crucifixes into the hole, covered them with loose dirt, and replaced the piece of earth he’d cut away. Only narrow lines in the grass remained to mark where he’d disturbed the soil, and as he stared down at them, a sense of satisfaction welled up inside him.

  The crucifixes had been lying unused in a drawer for months, since his final encounter with the horseman last autumn. He’d thought of them occasionally since then, but had never had reason to retrieve them – Sleepy Hollow was no longer a haunted place. When spring had arrived, banishing the long, cold winter and shedding new light on the countryside, he’d been struck by the urge to find a final resting place for the objects.

  He hadn’t particularly wanted them as reminders of what had happened, and simply letting them stagnate in storage had seemed an odd way to treat such powerful objects. He’d lost the third crucifix, the one that had saved his life – the horseman had taken it with him to Hell, or wherever he’d gone. But the ones he’d just buried were those he’d given to Katrina and Brom to wear during the height of the trouble with the horseman. Now they rested in hallowed ground, in the cemetery by the church, guarding the grave that the horseman’s spirit just might have risen from. He had no intention to do anything that might summon the ghostly rider to reappear in Sleepy Hollow, but the crucifixes’ protection couldn’t hurt. Tucking the knife away and dusting dirt from his hands, he rose.

  A familiar figure on an equally recognizable black horse was approaching, moving at a jaunty trot. “John!” Brom called, reining Torben to a halt in front of the church. “Are you on your way home?”

  John nodded. He’d dismissed classes at the schoolhouse a quarter of an hour ago, and the cemetery had been his only intended stop on the way back to the farm.

  “We’d better hurry then,” Brom said. “Katrina promised to have fresh pie ready this afternoon.”

  Suddenly, John realized just how hungry he really was. “I’m sure it will still be there when we arrive,” he said, beginning the short journey home.

  Brom heeled Torben forward, but kept him at a walk that matched John’s pace. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” he said. “Just between you and me, her appetite has been half as vigorous as yours ever since she got with child.”

  “That vigorous?” John asked, feigning an expression of shock. “By God, we’d better hurry if we want any pie.”

  Brom laughed. “Just don’t tell her I mentioned
it.”

  John arched an eyebrow in Brom’s direction. “You can be sure that if there’s only half a pie left when we arrive, I’ll tell her every word you just said. I think you know who she’d give the rest of the pie to in that case.”

  They joked a little longer as they made their way down the road, but in truth, John’s mind was anywhere but on Katrina’s appetite, or even her homemade pies. Instead, he imagined her figure, particularly her always-luscious curves, which had been deliciously rounded by pregnancy. There was no knowing whether she carried his or Brom’s babe, but it didn’t matter, and they’d all certainly been enjoying the effects of her impending motherhood.

  Brom might jest, but John knew he was thinking about it too – ever since her belly had begun to swell a few months ago, they’d both found themselves incapable of keeping their hands off of her. That fact had just as much to do with her urges as it did with her enhanced figure – her pregnancy had induced frequent cravings, and for much more than just food. God, just thinking about some of the ways in which she’d propositioned the both of them, her eyes gleaming with lust and mischief, and her face glowing… He adjusted his breeches surreptitiously, trying to hide the bulge that had sprung up beneath them.

  “That hungry?” Brom asked, smiling wickedly down at John from his position in the saddle.

  “Yes,” John said, his excitement mounting as the farmhouse came into view.

  “On second thought,” Brom said, “you can have the last of the pie. While you’re eating, I’ll steal a few moments alone with Katrina.”

  “The pie can wait.”

  “I thought you’d say that.” Brom smiled in a self-satisfied manner, looking eagerly toward the farmhouse.

  When Katrina greeted them at the door, any semblance of propriety John had managed to retain on the road vanished as his cock throbbed, straining against his breeches. She’d given up on wearing stays a while ago. Her breasts swelled amply, and her nipples popped against the fabric of her bodice, the pink edges of her areolas showing, if just barely, above the neckline. She smiled knowingly as John and Brom stared – the dress was one that she’d stopped wearing months ago for the sake of decency. Every once in a while though, she donned it and wore it in the privacy of the house when she wanted to drive John and Brom mad. “I’ve been baking all afternoon,” she said. Mouth-watering smells drifted from the kitchen, evidencing her claim.