“What?”
“The Halloween 8K.”
The joggers carried a banner with a logo of the Horseman galloping and the words: YOU BETTER RUN! They were old, young, fat, skinny – and each one wore a Halloween costume. Batmen, Spider-Men, witches, vampires, fairies, skeletons and Little Orphan Annie trotted past. A fat werewolf sweated silver bullets. A middle-aged Dorothy wiped her brow with a terry-cloth Toto. A little girl in a green tyrannosaur costume stopped to growl at the onlookers.
Now this is Halloween, thought Jason Crane. Grab a costume and hit the streets.
He felt gripped by the Halloween spirit. It rose from the coffin where it slept and bit him hard. This happened every October – a week before Halloween. When pumpkins lit the porches, when homeowners strung cobwebs, when the wind turned cold and worried the leaves, something would catch him: the sight of a fright mask in the drugstore’s “seasonal” aisle – $9.95 clearance, hanging on prongs through its eyeholes – or black and orange crepe, party plates, door decorations, bags of bite-size Snickers or Peanut Butter Cups or mini boxes of Milk Duds. Sometimes the trigger would be the first playing of “The Monster Mash” on local radio, or Night on Bald Mountain, or Totentanz. Sometimes it would be the sight of a TV schedule packed with The Night of the Living Dead and Scream and My Bloody Valentine and Friday the 13th – or even Abbott and Costello Meet the Wolfman.
This year it was the little tyrannosaur sitting on the balustrade of the Headless Horseman Bridge, kicking her feet while her mother adjusted a sports bra. This was childhood – like the green felt dragon he had lost to the river. It’s Halloween, Jason realized, as if the idea were utterly new. Not a Halloween of gore and dangling eyeballs, either – not for jaded adults. This was a Halloween for that little girl: brewed from fear of the dark and bumps in the night.
“We’ll have to drive around,” Joey said as the 8K grew denser.
“Good,” said Jason. “I’m not ready to go home yet.”
The little girl skipped away. Jason smiled for no good reason except he was sixteen and it was time to have fun. They looped through Tarrytown and onto Neperan Road, driving into the hills above Sleepy Hollow.
“God, look at that,” said Joey.
They drifted past the Tarrytown Reservoir. A stripe of police tape stretched between two red outbuildings.
“Debbie Flight,” Jason whispered.
Joey turned the car into the parking lot.
“What are you doing?”
“Just for a second,” said Joey.
The sign on the first shed read “PARKING LOT FOR RECREATIONAL USE OF THE TARRYTOWN LAKE AREA ONLY – No Parking After Sunset Except for Village Sponsored Events.” An incompetent painter had tried to retouch the shed without taking the sign down first. The sign dripped with red paint.
Joey slipped under the police tape. Jason followed.
Reeds loomed on either side of the concrete stairs. Circling the second shed, the boys climbed to a patio overlooking the water, then walked down a pier that sloped into the murk. At water’s edge the reeds and buildings hid them from the street.
“A perfect place for a murder,” said Joey.
Jason had to agree. Even the wet crawlspace beneath the patio just begged for someone to hide a corpse there. Something jumped in the water. Jason’s sneaker slipped in algae. He caught a handful of Joey’s jacket and didn’t fall in.
“Time to go,” he said, recovering.
“Wait. What about those… powers of yours?”
“What about them?”
“If you’re not lying or deluded, couldn’t you do some good with them?” Joey gestured to the pier below. “Couldn’t you see the murderer?”
Jason didn’t want read those boards, but he did want Joey to believe him. He nodded, took his gloves off, knelt and pressed his palms to the wood.
“Well?” Joey said.
“God. Give a man two seconds,” said Jason.
“Hey. I’m new to this, Endora.”
“Just wait over there. It’s hard to do it with somebody watching.”
“I understand,” said Joey. “You’re E.S.P.-shy.”
“Shut up.”
Joey’s giggles took a full minute to subside. When the lake fell silent again Jason tried touching the pier. Nothing. He climbed onto the patio and touched the walls of the shed. He pulled back a plywood shutter and touched the broken glass. He went back to the stairs, felt the railing, and saw nothing except a dead ’possum curled in the reeds a few feet away.
“I tried,” he said.
“All right. If you were faking, you put on a good show,” said Joey.
“You wouldn’t have seen it anyway.”
“True. Let’s go.”
Jason’s palms were filthy. He knelt and wrung his hands in the water.
He thought he’d fallen in – that his foot had found the algae patch and pitched him into the water. But there’d been no splash. He still breathed. No. He wasn’t in the water – though the world had turned midnight and hunter and jet. He saw a lantern’s glare at the end of a tunnel and heard the brakes of an oncoming train. But the sound lessened and resolved itself into the scratched-metal cry of cicadas. His eyes adjusted, and he realized that he crouched on the pier at night, his hands in the water. The light at the end of the tunnel was the moon’s reflection in the reservoir.
And he was not alone.
The screech of a soprano soloist rose over the orchestra of cicadas. Debbie Flight clung to the top railing even as her body lurched down the concrete steps. A man dragged her by one arm and by the back of her leather coat. She lost her grip and seized a handful of reeds, uprooting them and swinging water through the air. She kicked, she scratched. She spewed a stream of profanity without constraints or commas.
The man was blond and muscular. He wore a dark long-sleeved work shirt. He heaved Debbie onto the patio and pulled her down to the edge of the water. He stared into the distance – a sleepwalker. His eyes were blank, his face slightly puzzled.
Like Valerie’s mother…
The man pulled back the sleeve of Debbie’s coat and held her left arm in the water. She beat at him and kicked ineffectually. He produced a disk of metal from a pocket. Jason couldn’t tell what it was. The edges glinted, red and silver. When Debbie realized what he was about to do, she stopped moving.
Jason crouched about six inches from Debbie. He could smell her perfume and hear her breath and see the tiny tag of Sleepy Hollow Realty on her chest.
She looked startled. She hadn’t realized she would die until this moment. The man raised the sharp disk: a soda can flattened by someone’s tire.
“I really liked you,” she said.
The man hesitated – struggling with something inside.
But he sliced her wrist anyway.
She made a tiny gasp. Jason hoped that the cold water numbed the pain. He couldn’t see any blood. The water was so black that her arm ended in a stump. Her breathing slowed. With a last surge of strength she clawed at her attacker. The man held her by the throat and she couldn’t reach his face, but she tore something metal from his collar. It flew up to the patio and dropped between the boards.
The man brought her head down. She was headless now, decapitated by the water. Her torso disappeared next. Her leather coat billowed around her. Then nothing was visible above the waist. She stopped struggling.
The man stood and swayed. He walked back up the pier and vanished at the top of the steps.
White squares appeared in the water, drifting from Debbie’s coat pockets and sailing away. They were business cards.
Debbie Flight, Realtor
Haunting the Hollow since 2008
Her cell phone rang.
Jason jumped.
It rang again and again: We are the Champions… We are the Champions… We are the Champions…
Uncharacteristically, Debbie let the call go to voice mail.
“Hello? Hello?”
Someone shook him. The sun was
sudden and blinding.
“JASON!” Joey said. “Hello?”
“I saw it,” Jason said. “I saw it.”
“You saw her get killed?”
Jason nodded. “He cut her wrist with a soda can.”
“Who did?”
Jason jumped off the pier and onto the mud by the water’s edge. He dropped onto his hands and knees and wriggled into the crawlspace beneath the patio. Above him Joey groaned with disgust. Jason searched the slime, breathing through his mouth when dead minnows swam past. He found what he was looking for and backed out into the sunshine.
“Oh, won’t you smell wonderful,” Joey said.
“Will you believe me now? Look. He did it.”
Jason held out the pin that Debbie Flight had torn from her attacker’s collar. It bore a logo that Jason recognized – as he’d recognized the blond man in the vision – a logo of the Horseman throwing a pumpkin at Ichabod, beneath the letters SHFD.
“Who was it?” said Joey.
Jason shook his head.
“Fireman Mike.”
23 A SHUFFLING OF CARDS
“Possession?” said Joey, “I know it’s Halloween and all but – come on!”
“He could have been drugged or drunk,” said Jason, “But – Valerie’s mom looked the same way.”
Joey bounced his forehead against Ladybug’s steering wheel.
“Right,” he said, “in the vision in the woods at the magic bridge with the leprechauns and Santa Claus – ”
“The light’s green.”
“Okay,” Joey said, shifting into park and turning in his seat. “Let’s say I believe you.”
“Okay, you believe me. Now will you drive? This guy’s honking.”
“What do we do about it? Go to the police?”
“They wouldn’t believe us.”
Joey nodded. “Padded cells.”
“Padded cells. So no police, definitely.”
“Definitely no police.”
A policeman tapped on Joey’s window. Several cars were honking now. Joey rolled down the glass.
“You know that green means go, right?” said the patrolman.
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Joey shifted and the gears ground metal. Ladybug coughed and died. “Uh – ”
“One foot at a time, son.”
Joey turned the key in the ignition with no success. The horns grew louder.
“Sorry, officer,” said Jason, patting Joey on the head. “Student driver.”
The policeman nodded. He turned away and yelled “Student driver!” The horns stopped.
“You’ll get the hang of it,” he said to Joey, making a gung-ho gesture with one fist. He sounded like he was addressing a four-year-old.
Ladybug roared to life.
“Good job!” said the patrolman.
“Gold star!” said Jason, earning a dirty look.
“You smell like minnows,” Joey said under his breath. He saluted the patrolman, found the correct gear and they drove on.
“You see? You see?” said Joey. “We just came this close to the loony bin.”
“We did not.”
“This close. ‘Why did you stop at the light, son?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know. I was talking with my friend the psychic about the possessed fireman he saw in a vision by the reservoir…’”
“Hey. You just ran that red light.”
“This close,” Joey shook his head. “Listen to us. Possession? Possession? We watch too many movies.”
Jason nodded. “We watch too many movies.”
“Way way way too many.”
#
Credits rolled on The Exorcist.
Joey sat on his bedroom floor hugging a stuffed koala. Jason sat at the computer (in sweatpants and a borrowed shirt) chewing his fingers off. The movie had been more terrifying then either had remembered. Even Booger had fouled his water.
“Could the Devil be possessing Fireman Mike?” Joey said.
“I don’t believe in the Devil.”
“And six weeks ago you didn’t believe in magic hand visions.”
“True.”
“But it can’t be like that – “ Joey pointed at the TV. “He won’t spin his head around and puke pea soup.” Joey hugged the koala again adding, “Will he?”
“The Devil’s just to scare you into going to church. Which I don’t and I’m not gonna.”
After all, what would Carl Sagan say?
“I go to church sometimes,” said Joey.
“You do?”
Joey nodded. “To sing,” he said.
“That’s reasonable.”
“But if it wasn’t the Devil, what do we think is possessing these people?”
Jason shrugged. “I want to say the Headless Horseman – ”
Joey moaned and threw the koala. Jason ducked. It hit the computer screen and landed on the keyboard.
“It is Sleepy Hollow,” said Jason, seating the koala on top of Joey’s Playbill collection.
“I’ve lived here sixteen years,” said Joey.
“And you’ve never seen him?”
“Not once. And I work in the graveyard. He’s supposed to be buried there, you know.”
“Yeah?”
Joey nodded. He rose to his knees and adopted his spookiest voice.
“Among the graves of the Old Dutch Church, they say, near the northern wall, you may notice a curious depression. There, my friends, is the site – the common grave in which the Headless Hessian lies…”
Jason remembered walking through the cemetery with Hadewych, and the little pumpkin rolling into an indentation in the earth.
“What are you reciting?” Jason said.
“The script from my lantern tour. Shh. The body of the trooper having been buried in the churchyard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head, and the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak.”
“What’s a lantern tour?”
“People tour the cemetery at night carrying lanterns. I’ve led a dozen of them. I think of it as an acting exercise. And I wish the Horseman were real ’cause it would be so great to see him jump over the headstones and decapitate my whole group.” Joey pointed at invisible tourists. “You there. You ask too many questions. Off with your head! And the Horseman rides in and rolls their noggins back to Nebraska.”
“That’s harsh.”
“You do the tours and miss Halloween. It gets old.”
“So has anyone seen the Horseman?”
“Eh. Most Haunted and Ghost Hunters have filmed in the cemetery and they always find something.” He rolled his eyes. “But people lie.”
“Right.”
“You’ve seen the Horseman, though.”
“I don’t know that.”
“You said he threw a pumpkin at Ichabod right in front of you.”
“So now you believe me?”
“Of course. You didn’t plant that pin in advance.”
Jason took the pin out of his pocket and ran his thumb over the logo. He got no visions from it.
“I didn’t see what threw the pumpkin,” he said. “It could have been Brom like in the story. Hell, maybe some acting troupe recreated The Legend on that spot and I thought it was the real thing.”
Someone knocked.
“Yeah?” Joey called. Jason shoved the pin in his pocket.
“Are you two decent?” Pat Osorio said from the other side.
“Mom. He’s not my boyfriend.”
She stuck her head in and frowned.
“Excuse me for being open-minded,” she said.
“What – do – you – want?” said Joey.
“Jason’s clothes are dry. And don’t you need to run to your little thing?”
“Crap. The Hollow!” Joey said, leaping to his feet. “I’ve got to get into makeup. It’s almost six!”
“Honestly,” said Joey
’s mom, “you’d lose your head if it wasn’t attached.”
The boys looked at each other and began laughing.
“What’s so funny?” She frowned at them. “What did I say?”
#
Eliza lay on the sofa with her feet up, munching on crackers and cheese, flipping through a stack of folders.
“I’m home to dress and then I’ll be out,” Jason said. “Will you be okay tonight?”
“Have fun, Honey,” she said, nodding. “I’m just catching up on my paperwork.” She lifted a file. “Real estate office dropped these off. I called them. That Debbie Flight was supposed to send my papers a week ago, bless her lazy soul.”
Jason stopped on the stair. He didn’t want to think of Debbie right now.
“Have a dull time, I guess.”
“I’ve had plenty of fun. Loads of it. Go forth. Dance and be merry.”
Jason climbed the stairs.
“Look nice,” she called from below.
#
He did look nice, he decided. He’d had a haircut just yesterday and, once showered and shaved and spritzed, he’d become an almost passable human being. He turned in the mirror, pulled a spot of shaving cream off his earlobe. He had just pulled on his black jeans when he heard a terrible cry from downstairs.
“Oh, my God,” Eliza bellowed. “Oh. Oh, no!”
Jason bolted through the bedroom door barefoot and shirtless and stumbled down the steps.
“What? What? Did you fall?”
Eliza paced the center of the living room, papers in her hand. Charley turned circles and jumped at her.
“That son of a bitch,” Eliza growled. “That shady son of a bitch.”
“Who?” said Jason, reaching for the papers.
She kept her distance.
“I’ll handle it,” she said.
“No. Who’s the son of a bitch?”
Eliza’s jaw worked as if she were cracking nuts with her teeth or grinding iron rails into ball bearings.
“I am going to kill him,” she said. “I will.”
She let loose a stream of foul language that chilled Jason worse than her shouts had. Eliza only swore like that when someone had a brutal beat-down coming.
“What’s happening?” he said.
Sleepy Hollow: Rise Headless and Ride Page 20