Eliza lectured him on his carelessness for ten minutes, complimented him on his ingenuity for five, and speculated about the Treasure for another ten. What could it be? Wasn’t this fun? At long last! Jason couldn’t help but feel happy, seeing her enjoying herself so much. It almost made the whole ordeal worth it. Almost.
“And most of all,” said Eliza, patting Jason’s leg as he drove, “I’m so glad to see you and Hadewych getting along so well.”
20 THE HORSEMAN’S TREASURE
Valerie waited for them in the parking lot. Charley snarled when she saw her, so Jason held the dog’s collar as he and Eliza crossed the lawn.
“Why didn’t you come?” said Eliza, taking Valerie’s arm.
“I don’t like – cemeteries,” said Valerie. “Too physical. I’m more – spiritual.”
The McCaffrey Funeral Home was also Vernon McCaffrey’s house. His mother, Sylvia, a doddering Jewish woman of at least eighty, met the group at the door. Charley wet the carpet in the entry hall and had to be banished to the back yard. She scratched at the screen for five minutes but when no one came to parole her she turned a circle and lay in the weeds by the crematorium chimney.
When McCaffrey and Hadewych turned up, they warned the ladies not to be in the morgue when they opened the coffin – “Exhumations are icky,” is how McCaffrey put it – but Valerie and Eliza had to witness the big unveiling. They were too curious to wait outside and, besides, the boys were being sexist.
Jason would be in the room too. One more skeleton wouldn’t make tonight’s dreams any worse. He slipped into the restroom first and splashed water on his face, washed his dirty gloves clean and put them on wet. He wasn’t going in unprotected, even if it raised eyebrows.
McCaffrey’s downstairs morgue was terrifying and banal at once: a dingy room, with a drop ceiling and exposed cinderblock. Jason slipped in and stood next to an industrial sink tea-stained with rust. He tried to concentrate on a bottle of hand sanitizer and a box of Brillo pads – rather than on the embalming tables, or the rows of instruments hanging on the wall: saws, hoses, clippers, and something that looked like a shoe stretcher sized up to accommodate a human rib cage.
“Do you have a cat?” he said.
McCaffrey grinned. “It’s formaldehyde. You get used to it.”
Jason shuddered. How horrible to end up here – in McCaffrey’s little Empire of the Dead. How horrible to be nude and helpless while that balding Texas butterball puttered about with tubes and cotton – lipstick, needle and thread. No, that wasn’t how life should be.
But this wasn’t life, of course. This was the other thing.
McCaffrey produced a wrench and hammer and – with elaborate ceremony – circled the coffin, harvesting a berry-pile of bolts. Jason could tell that they twisted off easily. The muscles in McCaffrey’s forearms barely flexed, but he grunted dramatically, Samson testing his strength at the county fair.
Ring the big bell, cowboy. Jason giggled to himself. Win your filly a stuffed armadilly! Or whatever they did down in Texas.
McCaffrey popped off the metal that secured the lid. The rib that read ABSALOM CRANE–1850 came up first. He pulled the second away and piled the metal to one side. He picked up a chisel, tap-tapped around the seam, and then struck the wood with the heels of both palms.
The lid jumped and the seam became a thin black stripe.
“Moment of truth,” said McCaffrey, but he didn’t sound happy.
Eliza squeezed Jason’s hand. Valerie tucked her chin and turned towards Hadewych. He put an arm around her shoulders, but watched Jason.
The coffin exhaled as McCaffrey raised the lid – just a faint whiff of dust and droppings, of trash left out in the summer. A grey cloth covered the figure inside – a shroud, not a layer of spider-silk as Jason first thought. McCaffrey drew it back.
Absalom Crane was too tall for the coffin. His slender body had been turned on its side and his knees were drawn up. Jason’s eyes shot evasively to Absalom’s feet. They were enormous. The shoes had rotted away, exposing a jigsaw puzzle of bone.
He’ll have to buy new shoes, Jason thought. Big ones. Size seventeen like me, probably. He’ll have to order them online…
He pushed the hair out of his eyes.
His mind was distracting itself, he knew – distracting itself in order to process the sight a little at a time – the tilted pelvis – the painful spine – the ribs, brown and ivory like keys on an antique piano – distracting itself so it could return gradually to the worst sight, which had been obvious as soon as McCaffrey had drawn the shroud aside.
Absalom Crane had no head.
The line of his long body ended with an anti-climactic nub of neck vertebrae. A black valise with a bronze clasp sat where the head should have been.
He glanced at Valerie. She pressed fingers to the valve in her neck, getting it ready to scream, just in case.
Can you scream with a valve in your neck? Wouldn’t it hurt? Jason couldn’t imagine.
Hadewych’s expression was peculiar, inward-focused. Jason lost sight of it as Eliza moved in to get a better look.
“What’s that down there?” she said.
Absalom’s arms extended away from his body as if cradling a child. Each hand grasped the opposing forearm, making a wide but empty ‘O’. Something silver lay loosely in this space.
“Hello, what have we here?” said McCaffrey.
The sheath was decorated with an elaborate intaglio – with complex symbols and thatched patterns picked out in tarnish.
Eliza turned to Hadewych. “Is… is that it?” she said.
“It may be,” said Hadewych.
McCaffrey laid the sword on top of the burial cloth. The adults gathered around, whispering amongst themselves. Jason made do with a mezzanine view, peering over the top of Eliza’s head. The whispering grew more and more grumpy. This is the Treasure? It looked perfectly ordinary to Jason, like something from a flea market.
But what were they expecting? The tablets of the Ten Commandments? This isn’t the Ark of the Covenant.
He felt shut out. He retreated to the metal stool by the sink and sat staring at the man in the coffin.
Am I the only one who sees a person?
The adults huddled around the sword. It – not the corpse – was their dearly beloved. Not Annabel’s husband, Jesse’s dad. Jason’s three-times-great-grandfather. But this was Ichabod’s son, squirreled away in the Van Brunt tomb behind puzzle locks and cemetery rules – for what? Why wasn’t he shipped back to Bridgeport with a note reading, “Dear Annabel: Sorry we decapitated your husband, signed Sleepy Hollow”?
“What’s in the bag?” Jason said.
The four adults turned. McCaffrey shrugged, walked to the head of the headless man’s coffin and opened the valise, producing several items:
Underwear.
A striped undershirt.
A pair of glasses in a leather case.
A train schedule and other papers.
A handkerchief.
A skull.
McCaffrey hollered when the handkerchief fell away and revealed the thing. Even after gravedigging for many years, it’s still startling to find a skull in a traveling bag. He fumbled the thing and it spilled out of his hands. The adults recoiled, but Jason threw himself from the stool, landed on his belly, and caught the skull before it could smash into dust.
I’ve got you, Absalom, he thought.
“Nice reflexes,” said McCaffrey. Jason handed the skull back, grateful that he’d worn his gloves. Hadewych helped him up and slapped his back.
“Is that – his skull?” said Valerie.
“Looks like.” McCaffrey said. He laid the valise on its side and nestled Absalom in a bird’s nest of underwear and papers.
“And there’s nothing else?” said Eliza.
“Nothing but the sword,” McCaffrey said. “Sorry.”
“I see,” said Hadewych. “Was there anything else in the tomb?”
Jason felt positively riddled as they
all turned to look at him. He had hidden the book, of course, in the trunk of the Mercedes. Should he tell them what he’d found? He remembered Agathe raising a finger to her lips. This will be our secret. She had directed the gesture to Dylan, of course, but Jason felt bound to it himself.
“Nothing important… that I remember,” he said.
Someone coughed. McCaffrey’s mother stood on the stairs. She whispered in her son’s ear and left.
“I got a call, y’all,” said McCaffrey, “so… uh… take your time and I’ll be back in a couple’a ticks.”
“Can you – close the coffin first?” said Valerie.
McCaffrey struck his palm against his forehead. Jason noticed a bit of Absalom’s striped undershirt that had fallen out of the coffin, and almost got his fingers squashed tucking it back in. The lid groaned shut and McCaffrey bounded up the stairs.
Hadewych drew the sword from its scabbard. It rang as he raised it, glinting under the fluorescent lights.
“What do you think?” said Valerie.
“It’s old,” said Hadewych. “Very old.”
“Eighteen-fifty at least,” said Jason, needling Hadewych a little.
“I bet it was his,” said Eliza, her voice rapturous.
“Whose?” said Jason.
“His, silly. The Headless Horseman’s.” She shivered with superstitious delight.
She’d throw salt over her shoulder if she had some, Jason thought.
“May I?” she said, reaching for the hilt.
“Of course,” said Hadewych.
Eliza took hold of the thing. Hadewych released it and the point fell to the floor.
“It’s heavy,” she whooped, spinning with the thing. “Look at me, Honey. I’m swinging the Headless Horseman’s sword. Look out. I’m gonna getcha!” The whole group laughed.
When I am eighty years old, Jason thought, I will still remember this.
He saw beneath, then, back to the little girl his grandmother had once been – pigtails and a striped bag of popcorn – bouncing in a theater seat – oh so restless for her Legend to begin. It wasn’t a vision Jason was having, just love. She’d been his mother, his father, his lawgiver and his support – and yet he felt like an amused parent. Oh, for a camera to capture this moment.
“We don’t know – that it was – the Horseman’s,” said Valerie.
Eliza settled the sword and flexed her knobby fingers, feeling the strain. “It’s the Horseman’s Treasure,” she said.
“But why would the Treasure be a sword?” said Jason.
“Because he treasured it, silly,” said Eliza, as if that answered everything.
Jason took the blade in one gloved hand. He didn’t want to burst her bubble, but now he was stewing over her lack of logic.
“Brom did all this – to keep a sword away from his son?”
“It appears so,” said Hadewych. “Let me look at it, ’Liza.”
He took the hilt but Jason held the blade. He and Hadewych played tug-of-war – with Eliza at the centerline – until the edge threatened to slice Jason’s glove. Hadewych’s smile flashed in the silver as Jason let go.
“It could have qualities which we haven’t discovered,” Hadewych said.
“A magic sword?” Eliza said.
“Eliza,” Jason said, scoffing.
She scowled, turned her back, and patted one sore shoulder. Jason brooded and massaged.
“My ancestors might have believed that,” sighed Hadewych. “It was a superstitious time. Ah, well. We tried.” He slipped the sword into its scabbard, went down on one knee and presented it on open palms. “Your treasure, my lady.”
Jason rolled his eyes, but the gesture did have a valiant flair – even though the maiden was over eighty and the knight knelt in a morgue.
“I couldn’t,” said Eliza.
“I insist,” said Hadewych. “You’ve been such a sport, moving here and indulging us. Take it. It’s a gift.”
Jason was seething. It doesn’t balance the scales, you jerk. You uprooted my life. And you give us a sword? The thing’s probably covered in bubonic plague. This is grotesque!
“Ow, Honey,” said Eliza. “Don’t rub so hard.”
Jason stalked away. Something else was eating at him, but he couldn’t place it.
“That can’t be the – Treasure.” Valerie slammed a fist on the embalming table. A scalpel fell from a shelf. “Not after all we’ve – been through.”
“Let’s go somewhere for dinner. It’s been a busy day,” said Hadewych.
“No, no,” Jason said, as agitated as Valerie had been. “Who cut Absalom’s head off?”
“The Horseman, obviously,” said Eliza.
Jason pressed his hands to his eyes. “There’s no Horseman.”
“Yes, there is,” said Valerie.
And you believe in tarot cards, Jason thought, but he took a deep breath and said, “A person killed him, not a ghost.”
“You’re saying my ancestors are murderers?” said Hadewych, amused.
Jason grabbed the lid and opened the coffin over their protests. He pulled the train schedule from beneath the skull.
“Okay, here’s a train schedule. From New York to… Connecticut. He came down from Bridgeport, right? – that’s his travel bag – but somebody in Sleepy Hollow decapitated him.”
“The Horseman…” Eliza muttered.
“Maybe. Fine. But, hold on, look at this.” Jason had unfolded a piece of paper. “Isn’t this Brom’s handwriting?” he said. “I haven’t seen it in English.”
Hadewych reached for it but Jason held it back.
“Brom is my ancestor,” Hadewych said. Jason relinquished the page. Hadewych scanned the writing. “Yes, this is Brom. June thirteenth: Dear Ichabod,”
Eliza gasped and leaned forward.
“May I have the honor of addressing you by that name? Honorable Judge Crane does have a pleasing sound yet I hope that we are beyond titles, you and I? In Irving’s tale we shall be entwined forever more, for good or ill. It is my wish that we should meet again, and embrace each other as friends at last, two old men who stumbled into a tale together. Mister Irving has planned a Halloween Feast, in honor of the thirtieth year of his Legend. We would be delighted if you could join us. We might explain ourselves to each other, and perhaps share stories of our departed Katrina. Six in the evening on Halloween night, at Sunnyside.”
“Sunnyside?” said Eliza.
“Washington Irving’s estate,” said Valerie. “He lived in – Tarrytown.”
Hadewych concluded. “Your humble servant, and now-toothless rival, Abraham “Brom” Van Brunt.”
The group sat in silence. For the first time, the four actually felt as if they were part of the old tale.
“The Sketch-Book says eighteen-twenty on the cover,” said Jason, “so the thirtieth anniversary was eighteen-fifty.”
“The year on the coffin,” said Hadewych, “and the year Brom died. Just weeks after this Halloween party.”
“Ichabod died in eighteen-forty-nine, though,” said Jason. “He was already dead when Brom sent this invitation. So – Absalom came in his father’s place. And they killed him.”
“They wouldn’t,” said Eliza, indignantly.
“Somebody did it – probably with that sword. But then, what? Brom sticks the murder weapon in the coffin?” Jason paced. “But – why not just throw it in the Hudson? Why hide it from Dylan? Why create this stupid legend about a Treasure? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Calm down,” said Hadewych. “It’s been two hundred years. These things become jumbled up, naturally. No one in my family would have killed your ancestor, Jason. Brom loved The Legend. This letter is evidence enough of that. And he buried Absalom in fine fashion – that’s an expensive coffin – and in his own mother’s tomb. Deep breaths. We’ll figure it out. What does it matter, though? You act as if this happened yesterday.”
Jason pointed at the skull. “He was a person. He – ”
“Ja
son Crane,” said Eliza. “Lower your voice.”
Jason folded his arms.
“Let’s take a break. Tensions are high,” Hadewych said. “So we didn’t find the Hope Diamond. We solved the mystery we wanted to solve. And we’ve found a most excellent document.” He squeezed Jason’s bicep. “Jason, you’re wonderful. Eliza brags about you all the time – how you love history – how logical you are. So here’s the logical conclusion – the Van Brunt family legend is just that – a legend. Another Legend of Sleepy Hollow and just as fictional as Irving’s.”
He released Jason’s arm.
“But we were sure,” said Valerie, balling fists over her head. “And now we have – nothing to – fight him with.” She brought her fists down on empty air – or some invisible target.
“Fight who?” said Eliza.
“It’s late, sweetheart,” snapped Hadewych. He patted Valerie’s back.
“Let her talk,” said Jason. “What did you mean?”
Valerie shook her head and engaged her valve.
“Nothing. I’m – tired,” she coughed. “It can be – hard to – make the right words.”
“What a day, eh?” said Hadewych, chuckling. “What can you do?”
And now Jason realized what had been eating at him. Hadewych was handling the situation far too well. In the tomb, just a whiff of failure had driven the man berserk. He’d vandalized a dozen graves and smashed Agathe’s bust with a crowbar. The ladies hadn’t seen the rampage, but Jason had. Now Hadewych was acting like he didn’t care. Yes. Acting. As if –
“You took it,” Jason blurted.
“Took… what?” said Hadewych.
“The Treasure. You snuck it out of the tomb. I don’t know how, but – ”
“Jason,” said Eliza.
“He did. He’s taking this too well.”
“He,” said Eliza, “is acting like an adult, which you might try yourself.”
“Okay, son,” said Hadewych. “When did I even have a chance? I wasn’t the one down there alone. How do we know you didn’t take something?”
“Me? I would never – ”
But Jason stopped himself. He had taken something. And – oh no –
What if the book is the Horseman’s Treasure? He hadn’t even considered that. Dylan in the vision had been so eager to read Agathe’s book… so maybe Brom had hidden the book from him? Of course. But then Jason had something to confess. He was the thief – not Hadewych.
Sleepy Hollow: Rise Headless and Ride Page 17