He ran his fingers across the green skin in circles trying to guess what he might see. Himself playing in the backyard? Curling up under his old Star Wars sheets? He felt excited, giddy with anticipation.
The river became a terrible roar. People passed all around, a rush of people, a swarm of them. He saw them from waist level: men and girls and teenage boys and women with shopping bags, chattering and stomping and laughing and bickering. He turned in place, disoriented and terrified. He tried to squeeze between a grey plastic trashcan and a silver planter stuffed with artificial ferns. He bawled, clutching the dragon. He cried “Mama!”, his voice high, childish, and heartbreaking.
Jason jumped up, heart pounding. He stood on the rock again. He remembered that day when he’d lost his parents in Piney Bridge Mall. They had turned up, of course, and chided him for wandering off, but, seeing his tears, they’d bought him an ice cream to calm him down. The dragon had been with him that day. Yes. That’s why he carried it around for years – because it would protect him. Protect him from losing them. Oh, how he had crumpled with fear when he thought he had lost his parents forever.
Now the adult Jason did cry.
Worse than the memory was the realization that his childhood fear had come true.
He felt overheated. He leaned down and splashed water on his cheeks. It was clear, icy, and wonderful. He cupped both hands in the wash and took a deep drink.
Instantly he realized what he’d done and started heaving. How could he be so stupid? This river ran through an immense cemetery. This clear and wonderful water had been strained through a thousand graves. He choked and sputtered. He vomited and the liquid came up red and gold, reflecting the setting sun.
Jason grabbed his backpack. He shouldn’t wander the forest after dark. He reached for the stuffed dragon.
It was gone.
He saw a flash of green in the water. The dragon had slipped from the rock and was floating down the river. Jason threw his backpack over his shoulder and splashed along the shore, tearing off branches, trying to snare the beloved old thing. It darkened as water seeped into the felt.
His dragon drifted too close to a boulder roiling with foam…
No no no.
…and the swift undertow dragged it to the bottom.
Don’t go. Don’t go.
Jason waited, but it never came back.
But I still need you, he thought, though he was too old to believe in dragons.
He stood staring at the foam. He felt unreasonably sad and vulnerable. A piece of his childhood had drowned today.
He stomped away, red-faced, lost, miserable, tramping through thick stands of locust trees trying to keep sight of the damn river. He couldn’t afford to lose his bearings. Twilight fell. He felt panic rising. Branches caught his clothes. Mud grabbed his ankles. Twigs snapped his face. A piece of bark lodged in the corner of his eye, maddening him and limiting his vision even further.
He stumbled into a rocky clearing. To his right, a massive stone foundation hung over the water, a crumbling and sinister ruin. Vines spiraled up the nearby trees and squeezed their neighbor’s trunks like fingers around a throat. The brambles were thornier here, angrier, teeming with nettles and spiders. But a clear path opened ahead. A road had once run alongside the river to this spot.
The forest had grown dark. The sun had dropped away with unnatural swiftness. Night had caught him here in this place. The moon hung low in the sky, a pale eye peering at Jason from between the trees.
Where was he? The immense stone reached over the river, calling to the other shore. Jason left his backpack on the ground and climbed up onto the rock, carefully in case it collapsed beneath him. From his perch he spotted another smaller block thrusting out from the opposite bank, also reaching to clasp hands with its twin brother across the water, long separated by the rot and collapse of the timbers between.
Jason had found the foundations of a bridge.
He could see the roof of the Old Dutch Church, beyond the trees on the far side. The moonlight rippled on the water below. Jason felt an inexplicable urge to reach down and touch the broken stone. He felt his touch would fulfill some other long-sought reunion. His fingers spread and he kneeled – but then stopped himself. He straightened and scrambled back down, careful not to brush anything as he did. He had lost his taste for visions, thank you very much, and this stone no doubt had unpleasant tales to tell.
Something caught his eye. In the crook between the old road and the bridge, the ground sloped down to a stagnant lagoon shielded by the stone and protected from the southward current. A dark shape protruded from the mud there. Jason took hold of it, pulled, and a rotted leather purse lurched out of the mud with an unpleasant slurping sound. Its broken strap came up last. Jason felt like a bird pulling a worm from its hole.
He set the thing down on the stone. He found a handful of soggy papers inside plus a twenty-dollar bill and a few singles, but they tore through when he tried to remove them. At the bottom lay a washed-out lipstick and some spare change. The pennies were green but the quarters were bright. He put these things back in the purse and rubbed the mud off its side.
A woman crashed through the brambles and into the clearing. She looked about forty and was dragging a dead body. No, not dead. And not a body. A young girl with dark hair who screamed and clutched the vines.
“What are you doing? Let her go!” Jason shouted, but the woman ignored him. She turned around and grabbed the girl under the arms. The woman’s eyes were the emptiest Jason had ever seen, two black voids without reflection. She heaved the girl down the slope and into the water, as indifferently as a peasant woman might throw her laundry into a stream to beat it with a stone.
Jason noticed a black purse hanging by its strap across the woman’s back, the twin of the one he held in his hands. The girl choked and sputtered in the stagnant water, her black hair a suffocating mask across her face. Jason couldn’t move and couldn’t help. The older woman forced her under.
“You’re drowning her! Stop!” Jason cried.
Bubbles rose and broke on the surface. The girl clutched at the woman’s clothes and beat her assailant’s shoulder with a fist.
I’m seeing… a murder. This woman is a murderer. Oh, God stop this. Stop.
Then the girl’s hand found the strap of the purse and she pulled it. The older woman’s head snapped forward, but the strap broke. The purse flew and flopped against the side of the broken bridge. Something tumbled out and glittered in the mud.
A set of car keys.
The girl broke away, gasping for air. Her attacker seized the keys with her right hand, turned and grabbed the hair at the back of the girl’s head. She pulled hard, exposing the white throat. She raised her right arm and Jason saw the jagged outline of a key there. The arm came down fast and speared the girl through the neck. Blood burst from the wound, spattering the woman’s fist, dark and colorless in the moonlight. The key thrust down over and over.
Valerie. It’s Valerie. Her mother did it. That’s what Eliza said. This is her damned mother.
“STOP!” Jason screamed.
His body broke free of its paralysis and he stumbled forward, losing his balance. The woman disappeared. Valerie disappeared. He fell down the slope towards the spot where they had been. His hand shot out unthinkingly and he grabbed the corner of the black stone bridge.
Hoofbeats. Pounding hoofbeats. Coming closer. Coming up the road. Someone or something galloped towards him. The head of an emaciated horse burst from the gloom of the road. The rider was fumbling, out of control without saddle or bridle, clutching at the white mane, kicking the beast across the hindquarters with his thin legs, his face a frozen mask of terror. He whipped around to look back over his shoulder. Something chased him. Something terrible.
Jason spun away as the horse ran over him, spearing him through the chest with its iron-shod hooves. He was unhurt. The horse galloped upward and across the bridge, across strong timbers rough-hewn and knot-holed. The
rider wheeled the horse about, looking back from the far shore. He was wheezing. A sloppy white ruffle bobbed under his chin. His face was hopeful now – a familiar face, much like the one Jason saw every morning in the mirror.
Something thundered up behind Jason, not with a clatter of hoofbeats but with the teeth-rattling thunder of stone on stone. Ichabod (yes, of course the man was Ichabod) wailed, and the sound of his terror echoed across the valley. The hot breath of a horse burned the back of Jason’s neck. He stood frozen, unable to turn his head to see the thing behind him. He didn’t want to. This was no ordinary vision. He felt with certainty that the rider behind him – no, the horseman behind him – knew he was there.
Ichabod kicked his horse. It reared, brayed and would have thrown him but for the fistfuls of its mane he clutched. Horse and rider spun in place on the far side of the bridge, disoriented.
The horseman behind Jason laughed, a terrible deep cracking sound from all directions like a thousand axes chopping down the woods. Jason felt searing heat as a ball of flame whipped over his shoulder. A burning jack-o’-lantern arced across the bridge. Its maniacal face spun end over end. It grinned back at Jason for an instant, spun round, and crashed into Ichabod’s temple, knocking him from his horse and into the dust. The pumpkin careened upwards, exploding against the trees, shooting tendrils of flame up their trunks, igniting branches and showering the world with sparks and flaming leaves.
Jason recoiled, fell to his knees and threw his arms over his face.
His lungs and heart pumped wildly. They slowed. He brought his arms down.
The bridge was broken again.
It was over.
This is the true bridge, he thought. The true Headless Horseman Bridge – the bridge that the spirit could never cross, the bridge where his power ends. It’s here, forgotten and crumbling, while the bridge by the millpond impersonates it for the tourists.
And there is a Headless horseman. There is a Headless Horseman.
This was too much. He had to escape. He kept his eyes fixed firmly forward as he reached for the backpack and stood. Then, summoning all his courage, he turned and looked behind him.
Nothing loomed there except the vines, brambles and dark secretive woods of Sleepy Hollow.
22 A PERFECT PLACE FOR A MURDER
“So… you have superpowers.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Jason said. He lifted a box from the truck and passed it to Joey.
“You see things with your hands?”
“Right.”
“That sounds like a superpower.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“Does to me. Unless we’re talking braille, Helen Keller.”
Two men pushed past, carrying electrical cords and fixtures.
“Lower your voice,” Jason said.
“Oh, right,” Joey whispered. “Your secret identity.”
Jason grabbed a box and stalked away. Joey lifted his own, catching up halfway across the Philipsburg Manor parking lot.
“Thanks for being so supportive,” Jason muttered. “I thought you would listen.”
“I am listening,” said Joey.
“No you’re not. You’re making jokes.”
“Aw. Come on. Don’t be that way, Spidey.”
Jason spun around and scowled. “Stuff it,” he said, backing through plastic sheeting and into the staging area of the Horseman’s Hollow event. They trudged down a path of muddy plywood.
“I didn’t say I don’t believe you,” said Joey.
“And you didn’t say you did.”
“I’m working on it.”
A girl in a tight sweater passed, carrying wigs; a burly construction worker ducked by, carrying lumber. Jason and Joey both stopped to gape.
A man approached with a bloody hatchet. “Do you kids belong here?” he said.
“Yes sir! We’re volunteers, sir. I’m Joey and that’s – ”
“No time for biographies. What you got?”
“CostumedonationsfromtheSleepyHollowtheaterdepartment!” Joey said breathlessly.
“That’s sweet. But you’re on the wrong side of the millpond. That way – past the corn maze and behind Ichabod’s schoolhouse. Got it?”
“Yessirthankyousiritsanhonorsir!”
The man shouldered his hatchet and walked away. He had splashes of blood on his back.
“You’re insane,” said Jason.
“Insane? Look at this. This is live theater.”
An enormous crew crawled over the manor grounds. The preparations must have been going on for months. The handful of mill buildings had been dressed with assorted horrors and surprises. Corpses were swung from hangman’s ropes, jail doors were hung with stumps, torsos were slung on bloody spikes and heads peered from pikes. Tables groaned beneath gore and candles and smoking censers. A spattered priest sharpened his sword on a seventeenth-century grinding wheel.
Lanterns on hooks and lengths of sailing rope traced the path for visitors – leading them around the millpond and through the buildings, into the mill house and newer structures, out again, and into a fluttering white circus tent. A pumpkin-headed scarecrow menaced the boys, gleeful for a second chance at a child of Ichabod Crane.
Joey sighed. “Live theater is where I belong.”
When they entered the big tent, a half-dozen monsters turned to look at them – monsters with horns and fangs and saucer eyes – with melting, rotted flesh. The monsters wore makeup bibs, T-shirts and sweatpants. A woman in a nun’s habit bared jagged teeth. Joey and Jason carried their boxes past rows of severed heads, masks and prosthetics pinned or taped to wig dummies, powdered wigs, witches’ brooms, angel wings, fake fingernails, false fangs, hollow-eyed mannequins of children, widows’ weeds, Redcoat uniforms, shawls, tricorn hats, a cannon on rollers, four racks of colonial dresses, a shelf of candles, and a rotted corpse in polystyrene. They ogled the collection with wonder. They were on the inside. The scare-ers, not the scare-ees.
A figure stood waiting in the center of the dressing room, admiring itself in the reflection of three makeup mirrors. As they entered, it whipped about and snarled. Jason and Joey screamed and fell backwards onto the floor. Satan himself – a massive beast with two curling ram’s horns, withered red skin, and eyes blazing from beneath a thick ridge of brow – loomed over them with claws raised.
“Boo, you pussies,” said Satan.
“Eddie?” said Joey.
“King o’ Darkness himself,” said Eddie Martinez, posing. “Good to see you girls. I was afraid you broke up.”
“You’re the Devil?” said Joey. “How?”
“How you think? I got hired,” said Eddie. “I was working construction. And this costume lady took a liking to me. She’s nice.”
Eddie made a number of obscene gestures.
“But – but – that’s the biggest role,” Joey said. “Except for the Horseman. I’m only a Redcoat. After two callbacks. And you’re… you’re non-Equity.”
“That’s ’cause you couldn’t scare shit,” said Eddie. He took a step forward and they cringed. Even in a dressing gown and boxer shorts he was a scary Devil. “Can you do this?” he said. He locked eyes with Joey, fixing him with an imperious glare. Joey couldn’t hold eye contact and looked away. “Can you?” Eddie said, and he turned the same withering spotlight on Jason. Jason held his own as long as possible but he too gave in and blinked.
“I didn’t think so,” said Eddie, and the boys had to admit that if intimidation was an acting talent, Eddie Martinez was the Sir Laurence Olivier of Horseman’s Hollow.
“Just wait until I got my goat leggings on. Wait till I’m on that throne. You’re gonna think you’re in Hell, losers.”
They were in Hell already.
“Can I help you boys?”
A middle-aged woman peered at them through bifocal glasses.
“CostumedonationsfromtheSleepyHollowtheaterdepartment!” Joey said.
The woman sighed. “Let’s have a look.”
&nb
sp; “Where you been, gorgeous?” Martinez said to her, tossing the goat leggings onto the dressing table. “I was getting horny.” He pointed to his horns.
“What have I told you, kid?” said the woman. “That is not appropriate.”
“You know you love me,” said Eddie.
She opened Joey’s cardboard box first.
“Hmph,” the woman said, brushing her hands. She turned to Jason’s box and opened it. “Hmph,” she said again.
“What’s wrong?” said Jason.
“Get these out of here,” she said, closing the boxes. “They’re full of lice.”
“Lice?” said Joey. “But they were fine when we did The Crucible.”
“They’ve got lice now. Get them out before they get into any of my pieces.”
“Can we help you with anything el – ”
“Just get them out. I’ve got enough trouble. We open in six hours.” She gestured to Eddie. “Come on Satan, let’s see how you look with the contacts in.” Eddie slapped the woman’s rear as they left. “Stop that,” she thundered, and Eddie gave an evil laugh.
Jason and Joey collected the boxes.
“Lice? Gross,” said Joey. “I can’t do anything right.”
“Me neither,” said Jason. “I just made an awful mistake.”
“What?” said Joey.
“It’s terrible. I emptied my box of costumes right on top of Eddie’s furry pants.”
“You did?” Joey said, smiling.
“I’m about to.”
“Oh, no,” Joey lamented, putting his hand to his forehead. “The lice shall surely get into them.”
“Yeah,” said Jason, “and won’t that be hellish?”
#
After they’d made certain that Eddie Martinez would have company in his costume, they were done until Joey’s six o’clock call time. Joey’s car was rust-red with four patches of exposed steel on the roof. Joey said it was a Beetle and Jason said it looked more like a Ladybug. Joey had protested and fumed but the name stuck. Joey steered Ladybug toward Gory Brook Road, but a crowd of people blocked the intersection at Broadway.
“Oh, damn,” said Joey. “Was that today?”
Sleepy Hollow: Rise Headless and Ride Page 19