Sleepy Hollow: Rise Headless and Ride

by Richard Gleaves

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this back in Augusta?”

  “I wanted you to feel the place, first. And I wanted to live here. In an old house on a hill, with the millpond and the Old Dutch Church and the bridge where it all happened. Or would have, if it were true…”

  She patted his knee and put her hand to her head as if suffering a headache.

  “I’m sorry if I did wrong by you, Jason. I was… taken up.”

  “Will you promise me something?”

  “The moon and the stars,” she said.

  “Just this. Remember that cemetery in Bridgeport? On the hill?” She nodded. “If we’re going to dig up Absalom Crane, let’s not rebury him here. Let’s move him to be with his wife. And let’s fix up that Bridgeport cemetery. Or at least find him a plot of his own here that people can visit. Okay? He deserves better than somebody else’s old tomb.”

  “You’re such a good boy.”

  “And promise me. Promise me you’ll stay away from tarot cards and always tell me what’s going on.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.” She saluted smartly. “This is going to be fun.”

  We’re digging up a dead body and she thinks it’s fun. But it kind of is.

  He took out his cell phone.

  “Give me Hadewych’s number.”

  As he dialed, as the phone rang, his stomach was a beehive, his whole body impatient to reach tomorrow. I know what this is, he thought. This is the feeling little monkeys get before they leap off their first branch, or that baby sparrows get before their mother noses them off the edge of the nest. This is the sensation of knowing you are about to be tested, that you’re about to fall into something.

  Someone answered.

  “Hello?” Hadewych sounded half-asleep.

  We always jump, you know. People can’t help it. They yell Geronimo, they kiss the girl on the stoop. They step onstage, into the ring, onto the dance floor, into battle. They chip away stone to find the treasure in the tomb. They risk curses and dark magic and failure and fraud. They risk life, and jump.

  We just can’t, can’t, help it.

  “I’m in,” said Jason, and hung up.

  10 sleepy hollow cemetery

  Hadewych stood by the gate of the Old Dutch Church.

  “You ready?”

  Jason nodded. He’d worn his only suit and had tried to tame his hair, unsuccessfully.

  Locust and elm trees bristled in the distance. The last shimmer of September sun had bled away. They skirted a gate of wrought iron. Beyond it, Jason caught glimpses of headstones, grouped within plots partitioned by low iron railings, one family separated from the next. Above ground, at least.

  “We’re going to the offices, on the other side of the cemetery. I thought we should walk a bit and agree on what we’ll say.”

  “I’m not going to lie,” said Jason.

  “Of course not. But you don’t need to mention the Treasure or the letter. Understood?”

  They trudged uphill. The church looked like a bullet of fieldstones, flat end to the street, rounded cone of the nose pointing east toward the river. His eyes roamed from the spire and weathervane to the high arched windows. He could see the outline of pews inside and an embroidered cloth slung over the pulpit railing. Two harvest wreaths made russet circles against the whitewash of the door. He paused to read the plaque:

  Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow

  Church of the Manor of Philipsburgh

  Erected by Frederick Philipse

  1697

  They rounded the corner and Jason saw the graveyard. Row by row they stood, like fins on the back of a beast: grey headstones, red headstones, baby headstones, broken headstones, tilted headstones, fallen headstones, headstones and headstones and headstones all marching up the hill.

  “Do we have to go this way?” Jason said.

  “Scared?”

  “No.”

  “There’s no sidewalk north of the bridge. Come on.”

  They trudged along.

  Jason wasn’t scared, but walking over graves isn’t like strolling through a meadow; it’s like creeping through a barracks at midnight, stepping over cots and trying not to wake the sleepers.

  “Look here,” Hadewych said, stopping. The stone to his right had eroded away but Jason could still read “Catriena Ecker Van Tessel” beneath a wide-eyed face with wings, effigy of a rising soul.

  “Is that…”

  “Katrina? The locals think so. See how they put the little pumpkins on graves that are Legend related? But they have it wrong. Her married name was Van Brunt.” Hadewych poked the pumpkin with a finger. It fell, bouncing down the row and into a shallow depression strangely empty of markers.

  “Leave it,” said Hadewych.

  They reached the end of the Old Dutch Burial Ground and entered Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. They strolled on shady pathways, slipped between mausoleums, beneath weeping statuary, down paths dotted with urns and wreaths and flowerpots, past Martin and Vale and Adams and Delovan and Stringer and Johnson and Smith and the tomb of the unknowns, onto a driveway playful with somersaulting leaves.

  A man waited at the administrative center. “It’s about time. The appointment’s at eleven.” He was about fifty, balding, with the feeblest attempt at a comb-over. His accent was southern. Texas, maybe. “You must be the boy,” he said. He shifted his cigarette into his left hand and stuck out his right. “Vernon McCaffrey, Junior.”

  “Jason.” He shook the man’s hand.

  “Vernon is our funeral director,” said Hadewych. “He works for the two of us and us only. Once we get everything signed, he’ll be overseeing the actual exhumation.”

  Jason fought the urge to wipe his palm. He was thinking about formaldehyde.

  “Let’s not keep them,” said McCaffrey. He tamped his cigarette on someone’s marker and entered the building.

  Hadewych stopped at the door. “One more thing, Jason. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “No. Eighteen. Here.” He handed Jason a small card of plastic. It was a photo ID from the state of New York, a driver’s license with Jason’s picture, but his birth date had been pushed back two years.

  “This is phony.”

  “They won’t check.”

  “I’m not giving them this.”

  “Yes. Well. Unfortunately, a minor can’t sign for a disinterment.”

  “Then we call it off.”

  “It’s just a technical point.”

  “Does Eliza know you’re…?”

  “Of course. Look, you can use it this once and then throw it away. Who is it hurting?”

  “I told you I wouldn’t lie.”

  “They’ll just glance at it. They’ll be looking at the ancestry documents mostly.”

  “And did you change my age on those, too?”

  “You said you were in.”

  Jason would have turned back and walked home but he thought of Eliza saying “I don’t have many adventures left.”

  McCaffrey’s sweaty face appeared at the door.

  “Are you comin’?”

  “Are we?” said Hadewych.

  Jason nodded, and pocketed the ID.

  #

  James Osorio, superintendent of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, leaned forward across his desk. “All right. What are you really up to?” His voice was knowing, winking. His eyes flicked back and forth from Hadewych to Jason. Jason looked away. Hadewych did not. “Your name is Crane, yes?” Osorio said, putting on glasses and scrutinizing the paperwork.

  “That’s right,” said Jason.

  “But this has nothing to do with The Legend?”

  “No,” said Hadewych.

  “Oh, come on. I wasn’t born yesterday.” He leaned back in his chair, chuckling to himself. “Van Brunt. Crane. Those two names together, digging up a grave in my cemetery, three weeks before Halloween? What sort of show are you planning?”

  “There’s no show,” said Hadewych. “In fact, I’d like your assurance that the whole
matter will be kept between us.”

  “You’re not after publicity?”

  “Furthest thing from our minds.”

  Osorio bent forward and his glasses reflected Hadewych’s oh-so-winning smile.

  “I don’t believe that,” he said, returning to the papers.

  Osorio’s office was a little crypt itself. The narrow windows were Gothic, peaked on top, suitable either for a church building or for pouring oil down on barbarian invaders. The walls were checkered with photographs of the grounds. No fewer than seven featured the Headless Horseman, an actor on horseback clopping among the graves – backlit, raising a sword.

  “Let Mister Crane talk.”

  Jason pushed the hair out of his eyes. He saw his own reflection in the man’s eyeglasses now.

  “What’s this about, son?” Osorio said.

  “Does it matter?” said Hadewych, his voice tight. “We’re not asking. The paperwork is in order and it’s our right to request a disinterment. Our reasons are not your business.”

  “Everything that happens here is my business. My job is to protect the dignity of the cemetery.” Osorio pointed a finger. “You’ve been after me for years to open this grave, Van Brunt. I think I have a right to know why.”

  Hadewych’s smile remained, but the face around it whitened and hardened, transforming him into a marble cherub.

  “Because I want it,” whispered Jason. Hadewych and Osorio turned to face him. “I don’t want my ancestor to be part of all this Legend stuff. I’m sorry. This is a beautiful cemetery,” Jason gestured to the framed photographs, “but is that dignified, sir? A fake Headless Horseman riding across people’s graves? Anybody named Crane is going to end up as a tourist attraction if they stay here. Not a person, just a tourist attraction. And that’s why I want him dug up and moved. He deserves better. Don’t you agree?”

  Osorio frowned. Jason waited for him to bluster and become indignant. But the man’s face softened. He leaned back, took the glasses off, and rubbed his eyes.

  “You’re right,” Osorio said, “You’re absolutely right.” He pushed the papers across the desk. Hadewych signed and passed them to Jason. Jason hesitated, but wrote his name on the dotted line, dating it October eleventh. Osorio stood. “I’ll just… photocopy this, and we’ll go check out the tomb. Good deal?” He held Jason’s fake ID.

  Jason cringed, but nodded.

  Osorio hesitated at the door, near a photo of the Horseman menacing a headstone. He took the photo down, tucked it under his arm and exited. The door clicked behind him.

  Hadewych was staring at Jason, stunned. Vernon McCaffrey began to clap slowly.

  “The boy’s got balls,” he said.

  “Excellent,” whispered Hadewych. “Excellent job. So much for not lying.”

  Jason stood, collected his jacket, and looked down at Hadewych.

  “I didn’t.”

  #

  The Van Brunt Family tomb gripped the side of a hill with grey stone fingers. Retaining walls parted the earth, creating a narrow pathway down into the heart of the hill. An ancient stump, four feet in diameter, protruded from the right shoulder like a guard tower. A former branch had grown from the side of the stump to become a new tree; it twisted diagonally over the tomb and thrust upward in surrender or terror, trailing needle-thin twigs and brown garlands. Beneath it lay jumbled stones that had been the stairs to the tomb itself, a hollow cavity mortared and re-mortared over centuries.

  Jason put a hand on the rust-brown bars of the gate and turned on the flashlight. A thrill ran through him. He half-expected to see an Egyptian mummy lying in a sarcophagus, wrapped in linen, riding its stone lifeboat into eternity upon a river of gold and alabaster.

  The flashlight revealed a white marble floor and rows of bone boxes carved from sandstone or limestone. The corners of these were chipped, the lids cracked. Dirt and leaves had blown in, obscuring the inscriptions. He saw fragments of a bird’s nest, a few feathers. His light caught two yellow eyes, feral, staring back at him. His breath stopped. Some small animal chittered and ran into a crevice.

  “The Horseman’s Treasure,” whispered Hadewych, and Jason thought he could hear the word “Horseman” echo back at them from the tomb.

  In a niche above the boxes perched the crude bust of a woman. Her features were leonine, severe, her hair short. A chip of stone had broken from one eye. A dark horizontal line sliced through the neck. The bust had not been carved in one piece.

  “Who’s that?” Jason said.

  “Agathe.”

  The flashlight cast Agathe’s silhouette on the wall behind. It rose and fell with the motion of Jason’s hand.

  “Brom built our house for her, you said.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Hadewych. “She was the great matriarch of our family. Amazing woman.”

  “So, where is her box?”

  “There isn’t one. She disappeared. Her body was never found. She was ninety years old.” Hadewych sighed. “Another Van Brunt mystery.”

  Someone cleared his throat. They turned to find Osorio waiting, hands in pockets.

  “If you’re done here, I need to get back to the office,” Osorio said.

  Jason rattled the chain on the gate.

  “How do we get in?” he said.

  “It’s not that easy, son. It’ll take about a week to file things. We’ll call you then.”

  “McCaffrey will take care of it,” said Hadewych.

  He clasped Jason’s shoulder and walked away. McCaffrey waited down the hill, smoking. Hadewych and Osorio joined the funeral director and the three men ambled down the path, back toward the administration building.

  Jason stayed behind. He played his flashlight over the boxes again.

  Hello, Absalom, he thought. Guess who I am. Annabel sends her love.

  “’Ey! What you up to?”

  Jason spun, but saw no one.

  “Up ’ere, mate. You barmy?”

  A dark-haired boy sat perched on the stump above. His work clothes were brown with dirt and he carried a weed-eater. He wore safety glasses and enormous noise-canceling earmuffs that made him look like Princess Leia’s yard man.

  “I’m just looking,” said Jason. “I’ve got… family inside.” He turned the flashlight off.

  “Family in there? In that old ’ole? Blimey! Not bloomin’ likely. You’re mental you are!”

  Jason rolled his eyes. It was the worst fake Cockney accent he had ever heard.

  “Do you always talk like that?” he said.

  “Like wot, guv’nor?”

  “Like an extra from Harry Potter?”

  The boy frowned.

  “Not buying it, huh?” The accent was gone. “Fine. It’s a work in progress.” He jumped down, extended a hand. “Joey Osorio. Future Academy Award winner.”

  The hand was dark brown with dirt. Jason shook it anyway. It was good to see somebody his own age.

  “Jason.”

  Joey wiped a hand on his overalls, cocked a thumb over his shoulder. “You know that guy?”

  “Which? The superintendent?”

  “No. That’s my dad. The other one. Van Brunt. The blond guy.”

  “Yeah.” Jason grimaced.

  “Not your best friend?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Mine neither. He’s bad news, brother. I caught him trying to break in there once.” Joey pointed at the tomb. “I swear he had a chain cutter, like for stealing bikes?”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “He shoved it in a bag pronto, so I couldn’t prove anything. But, oh, did he put on a show. He said ‘don’t you know who I am’ and I should watch myself. The guy’s a bully.”

  “I know.”

  “He bullies his son, too.”

  “Zef, you mean?”

  “Uh-huh. You know him?”

  “I haven’t met him yet,” said Jason.

  “Zef’s a good guy,” said Joey. He sat at the end of the retaining wall, hugging the weed-eate
r. Jason recognized him now. He was the boy who had jogged past the house on Jason’s first day at Gory Brook.

  “So why the British accent?” Jason said.

  “I have an acting job.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. I am a Redcoat zombie at this year’s Horseman’s Hollow.”

  “The haunted house? I am impressed.”

  “You should be. I’m the youngest zombie they’ve ever hired. Two callbacks. I had to skip school. That’s between us, by the way.”

  “What’s the school here like?” Jason said, sitting.

  “It’s a school.” Joey shrugged. “Not much of a drama program. Plenty of jocks.”

  “How about history? I start on Monday.”

  “Then you’re just in time for Halloween. Halloween’s big here.”

  “I noticed.”

  Joey waved an arm. Beneath them, down the slope, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery spread in curved roads and platoons of headstones.

  “The Halloween capital of the world, my friend, and I’m the gravedigger.”

  “Alas, poor Yorick.” said Jason.

  Joey beamed. “‘I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.’ I’ll make a great Hamlet, don’t you think?”

  “You need a skull,” said Jason.

  “Yes I do. Get me one.”

  Jason cocked a thumb back towards the tomb. “Get me some chain cutters.”

  They laughed together. Down the slope, a car stopped and James Osorio honked the horn.

  “Joey,” Osorio said, “You’re on the clock!”

  Joey jumped up. “Sorry, Dad. I, uh – ” He held up the weed-eater. “Jason here was walking past and I didn’t want to hit him with rocks and stuff.”

  “Yeah,” Jason said, “it was my fault, sir.”

  “Then Mister Crane should keep walking, shouldn’t he?” said Osorio.

  “I was just going,” said Jason.

  “He was just going,” said Joey.

  Joey’s father shook his head and drove away.

  “What’s your name?” said Joey.

  “Jason….” He hesitated and then plunged ahead. “Jason Crane.”

  “Crane?”