Sleepy Hollow: Rise Headless and Ride

by Richard Gleaves

  “We’re moving back to Maine, that’s what’s happening.”

  “Why?”

  “I am sorry I brought you here. And I am going to beg your forgiveness when this is over. But I’ll make it right, I promise.”

  “Did Hadewych do something?”

  She raised a palm, forbidding Jason to ask any more questions.

  “This is my own stupidity. I’ll handle it. Go. Have a good time and leave it be.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Eliza nodded. “I’m sure, just – ”

  “What?”

  Her voice grew steely. “Don’t get too attached.”

  #

  Valerie thanked the clerk, and carried her luggage and groceries up the stairs and into room 208. The White Plains Motor Lodge was no luxury hotel, but it would do until after Halloween. This would be home for the next week. The room was clean, with two beds, a table and generic Hudson River paintings. And it was safe.

  She sat, opened her purse and checked the map again. Yes, she was safe – just beyond the distance a horse could travel and return between dusk and dawn. She had drawn a circle around Sleepy Hollow, marking off about ten miles in diameter. In this direction the Horseman’s reach only extended as far as the Kensico Dam. She unpacked, put her groceries away and showered.

  She put on her dressing gown, arranged the small blue kidney-shaped tray upon the left side of the dressing table, and the two porcelain bowls upon the right.

  She turned on her humidifier.

  I will play the Vivaldi, tonight, she thought. The Seasons, yes: “Fall.”

  She filled one bowl with a solution of hydrogen peroxide and water.

  Mother played that one, in Vienna, when she was young and Janigro conducted his last concert.

  She filled the second bowl with saline solution.

  Yes, “Fall.” That’s the mood I’m in tonight.

  She opened a package of pipe cleaners, set four to one side.

  Don’t think about it.

  Next to these, she placed a small handful of Q-tips and a small tube of lubricating jelly.

  She dragged me by my hair, she thought.

  Valerie stood, pushing the memory away. Tiny bottles of complimentary shampoo bounced and quivered.

  Vivaldi.

  She fetched her music player, synced the Bluetooth speakers, and selected a track.

  Yes, this is exactly what I wanted tonight.

  The piece began jauntily. The melody bounced and cavorted, and Valerie swung the tassels on her dressing gown in time to the music. She smiled, enjoying it, even though the violins did seem shrill on the old recording. Too much hiss and scratch.

  It was 1957, after all.

  Had her mother ever recorded this piece? No. Mother Maule didn’t care for the older composers. Nothing earlier than Mozart for her. Good. Valerie let it play as she washed her hands, applied talcum, and rolled on the dull yellow gloves. They were surgical gloves, bought in bulk from a Broadway pharmacy.

  Get it done.

  She returned to the dressing table, sat, and looked at herself in the mirror. Her dark hair was soft and attractive, short, with a stylish curl at the tips.

  Janice did a marvelous job, with all the wind this week.

  Her cheeks were rosy, the tiny lines that reminded her of dried apple hidden behind powder and base.

  I will look like her someday, she thought, but not yet.

  She pursed her lips. Yes, these were acceptable. Her eyes passed a shade too quickly from her chin down to her cleavage, of which she was quite proud. Then they slipped too far, down to the sickening yellow surgical gloves, and she sighed.

  Accept, she told herself. Get this done and, for once, don’t think about it.

  She looked at the valve on the front of her neck, a letter ‘X’ inside a letter ‘O’.

  A kiss and a hug, she thought. A kiss and a hug from Mama.

  She detached the valve, removed it. The inner tubing came out with it, trailing grey-green mucus. She picked up a pipe cleaner.

  Accept.

  Accept.

  I can’t. I can’t.

  Her mother had done it with the car keys, since no knife had been at hand. If she hadn’t had the keys, what might Mama have used? What would she have found, there in the forest? A branch? Would she have stripped a branch from one of the old poplar trees and used that? She imagined the thing, whittled to a point, piercing her throat. That would have been better, perhaps. That way I might have died. The keys were far too dull to complete the job, and now look at me.

  Don’t do this to yourself. Listen to the music. Hurry up.

  She swabbed the hole in her throat, dipping the cotton tip, expanding her lungs, and rotating it against the inside of her trachea.

  She could see her mother’s blank, befuddled face as she pushed her daughter’s head into the river. She saw the keys raised high in her mother’s hand, felt them stab downwards again and again, twisting, digging a hole to spill her blood. She saw herself kicking but unable to scream, pushed down into the cold water of the Pocantico River, dragged there by her hair and arms and leather belt, dragged, seized and plunged into the icy water.

  Mother is murdering me, she had thought. Mother murdering mother murdering murdering me. Smothering. Murdering. Mother mother no!

  Stop this.

  The peroxide frothed, just as the river had.

  Stop this!

  Her blood had gushed. Her body higher than her head so that gravity pulled her life out through the hole in her neck, out through her mouth, through her nose. And as the blood had left her, she had felt Him.

  This is how He died. She knew that somehow, though she could not imagine who He might be. He died here, on this spot, and lost his blood to this river. She felt Him. She felt his hands on her, holding her down, sacrificing her. She felt some spirit inhabiting her mother, possessing her, using her. Commanding her to be its instrument.

  Genesis, she thought: Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering.

  Mother, no…

  As she weakened, as the blood left her, she felt Him growing strong. Her strength, her power, giving substance to his veins, his hands, his muscle. It was a transfusion of her soul. The water was drinking her, and He, the Horseman, grew thick and sated on it.

  Then the hands were gone. Where the thing went, what He may have done in his awful vitality, she didn’t know.

  And out of that darkness, new hope. Think of that. Think of Hadewych.

  She had drifted out of consciousness, as her mother had regained it. Mother Maule had awakened on the shore of the Pocantico, clothes torn, arms scratched, her beloved daughter gasping and dying at her feet. She screamed to a man passing on the opposite side of the river. A man with blond hair. He had splashed across.

  Valerie remembered, vaguely, his arm slipping beneath her knees, his other cradling her wet shoulders. She remembered the branches of trees overhead, scratching out the eyes of the constellations. She remembered falling into the back seat of a car. The man had torn off his necktie, and Mother Maule held it pressed against Valerie’s throat with bloody fingers, so gentle, her face so concerned, so frightened, tears running down her neck as they drove.

  Valerie put the valve into the saline solution. She leaned over the humidifier and inhaled.

  Hadewych saved my life.

  She saw his face first, when it was over. Her mother wasn’t beside her when she woke. Mother Maule had been taken into custody.

  Hadewych sat with her through that long difficult night, refusing to leave, holding her hand, answering the questions she had no voice to ask, answering as many as he could, answering as best anyone could when discussing something inexplicable. The ventilator punctuated his words every few seconds, pumping her with air, her chest rising and falling against her will. She felt like a bicycle tire being filled at a gas station air machine; it was too much. She would burst, from
too much air, too much sadness, too much terror, from too much confusion; yes, she would burst from it all. But Hadewych held her hand, held her together. He explained that an emergency tracheostomy had been performed, a cuff inserted, and she would live.

  She would live, he promised.

  He promised, too, that he would not leave her.

  Mother Maule claimed not to remember a thing, when interrogated, only that she and Valerie had hiked up Witch’s Spring Trail in the Rockefeller Preserve and had picnicked at Spook Rock. There, she had fallen faint, and that was the last she remembered of the incident. There was more to tell, of course. The women had not been sightseeing, or hiking. They were not two bird-watchers on an afternoon jaunt. No. There had been more to it. But neither Valerie nor her mother spoke of that to anyone.

  Valerie reinserted the valve, tightened it, twisting the little ‘X’ inside the ‘O’.

  I miss my mother. When did I visit her last?

  She stripped off the gloves, toweled her face, frowned, reached for her makeup kit.

  I miss her. But it’s for the best. She can’t hurt me again.

  That had been October twenty-ninth, almost ten years ago. The anniversary was fast approaching. Her fingers still shook whenever she thought of that night. She thought of it three times a day, every time she cleaned her valve as per her doctor’s instructions.

  The Vivaldi ended. She put away the medical supplies, gave herself one last appraisal.

  How lucky am I, to have a man who wants me, despite everything.

  She pressed her fingers to the valve, testing it, forcing the air upward to her vocal cords. “Hadewych,” she said, in her deep crumbling voice. The sound frightened her, still.

  She turned off the lights.

  Mother can’t hurt me again.

  Was that true? She had hoped to feel safe in this hotel room, but she found that she missed her many padlocks and metal shutters. She missed the guns, too.

  Mother can’t hurt you again. But you know better, don’t you, than to relax your guard. It was never your mother, that night at the river. It was something else, something that was using her.

  And if it could use her, it could use anyone.

  She took off the dressing gown and slipped into a pair of jeans and a sweater. She poured herself a glass of cold milk and sat cross-legged on the bed. She took the few things she needed out of her purse – the incense burner, the candle, and the tarot cards.

  She lit the candle and the incense. She shuffled the cards.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  She cleared her mind of the past, and focused on the future.

  24 HORSES AT THE STARTING GATE

  A crowd had formed in the parking lot of Philipsburg Manor, waiting to be let in. Security patrolled the entrance to the event, keeping the crowd at bay until darkness fell. The Horseman’s Hollow banner hung above the gates: a vampire and witch gargling blood for the camera. The line stretched from the gates all the way to the concession stand at the other end of the parking lot.

  Jason slipped behind the concession stand, into an area about twenty-foot square and hidden on all sides by black tarp on poles. He stuck his head through the inside curtain and watched the actors mill about in the distance. He had texted Joey earlier and his friend was already waiting. Joey wasn’t quite made up. He didn’t have his coat on yet, only his ruffled shirt and blue pants with buttons up the side. His face was covered in greasepaint with dark circles under his eyes.

  “What?” he said. “I’m already late.”

  “There’s no ticket,” said Jason.

  “I told them to comp you. Can you… just buy one?”

  “I guess.”

  “Argh. Straight people,” said Joey. He turned to go.

  “Hold on,” said Jason. “At least until we know I can get in.”

  “Be fast,” said Joey. “They’ve got my teeth waiting.”

  Jason sprinted away.

  The woman at the ticket booth sat happily counting twenties. Her teased hair filled half the booth.

  “One, please?” said Jason.

  “Oh, sorry, baby. Sold out.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “These tickets go on sale weeks in advance. We only have a few the night of. Look – wait over there and I’ll let you know if we get anything.”

  Jason nodded and turned. The crowd began to applaud. The Headless Horseman had arrived, riding Gunsmoke. Zef had come to woo the crowd. The Horseman turned a circle and posed for pictures. Jason looked for Kate. She stood in line. By herself.

  “Don’t get too attached,” Eliza had said. But he was attached.

  And if we do move back to Maine… I might never see her again.

  “Oh please, please,” he said to the ticket lady. “You’ve got to get me in.”

  #

  Redcoat zombie Joey didn’t go back into makeup right away. He peeked from behind the tarp and watched Zef work the crowd. Person after person stroked the horse, made crazy faces for the cameras, pretended to be petrified or menaced by the rider.

  What did Zef do, hidden inside there? Laugh at people? Stick his tongue out at them? Call them names under his breath? Listen to a song on his iPod? What was Zef thinking inside that costume?

  And – Joey thought – when he takes that costume off is he just wearing a different disguise?

  Joey thought so. He hoped so. He didn’t quite know which was the true Zef – the one who sided with the bullies at school? The popular kid on the horse? The honor student? The one dating Kate? Paul Usher’s protégé? Or was the real Zef… the one who had come to watch Joey sing in White Plains, the Zef who’d sat with him in the parking lot until two a.m., talking about nothing in particular, the Zef who’d kissed him and jumped out the passenger side as if chased by the Horseman himself?

  Who knew?

  Probably not even Zef knows.

  Gunsmoke galloped toward Joey and he jumped back. Horseman Zef rode right through the slit in the tarp and turned the horse around inside the hidden area. Joey took Gunsmoke’s bridle.

  “Hey, beautiful,” Joey said. “Gunsmoke,” he clarified. He patted the horse’s cheek while the Horseman fiddled with his gloves.

  “You know,” said Joey, “some of us are going out after. I thought you could come? Kate too. Just – ” Joey gave up pretending. He hadn’t been alone with Zef for almost a year. “Can we talk? We never – we never talked? You know? After that night?” Gunsmoke sidestepped and Joey held the reins tighter. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “After you kissed me?” The Horseman shifted in the saddle. “If it was one time, that’s fine. I don’t expect anything. Punch me if you want, but – but – I think about it. A lot. And if you want to talk – anytime?” Joey raised his voice. “Hello? Can you talk to me?”

  “Talk about what?” said Zef, entering from the parking lot.

  Joey spun round. Oh… he –

  Zef tugged at the Horseman’s cape. “You okay in there, Puleo? Hey, Puleo?”

  The Horseman heaved the heavy costume up. Jimmy Puleo was inside. He wore his usual black knit cap. His face was red and dripping.

  “HOLY CRAP, ZEF!” Puleo gasped. “How do you breathe in this thing?”

  “I just do,” said Zef.

  “I can’t. I’m not doing this again.”

  “One night. I’ve got to have one night to see the show.”

  Joey tried to slip away.

  “Osorio,” said Zef. “You needed to talk to Jimmy?”

  “To me?” said Jimmy. “Sorry, I can’t hear anything under here.”

  Joey shook his head.

  “It’s fine,” said Joey.

  “You sure?” said Zef.

  “I just wanted to say… have a good show.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said Puleo, laughing. “You too, fag!”

  Joey’s eyes shot to Zef’s face, not Puleo’s. Zef’s lips were pressed tight in – Anger? Suffering? Joey could have sworn that Zef shook his h
ead, just a little. What signal was he sending? Was he saying he couldn’t defend Joey? That he wouldn’t? That he supported Puleo? That he was sorry? Was he begging Joey not to say anything? Pleading for him to understand? Was he saying, “I know you wanted to talk to me but you can’t because I can’t be seen with you”? All of the above?

  Joey couldn’t guess.

  So he nodded, just a little, himself – not knowing what he wanted to say either.

  Puleo pulled the tunic and empty collar of the Horseman costume back over his head.

  “I need to go,” Joey said.

  Zef took a step forward.

  “No,” Joey repeated. “I’ve got to go.” He cocked a thumb towards the backstage area. “I’m… scaring people tonight.”

  #

  Jason tossed a rumpled ten onto the counter, accepted his change, and took his pie and cider. He had cursed his luck when Zef joined Kate and kissed her. The line had started moving a little. Joey had gone too. Jason had no ticket and no options.

  Kate’s head rested on Zef’s shoulder. Jason harrumphed and walked to the picnic area.

  Another blond caught his attention.

  Fireman Mike.

  Mike wore a security uniform – black pants and T-shirt. He stood beneath the Horseman’s Hollow sign holding a scanner.

  Jason sat at the picnic table, took off his gloves and scarfed his food.

  Maybe if I shook Mike’s hand –

  “Can I help you?” Mike said as Jason approached.

  “Jason Crane, sir? We met?” He held out a hand.

  Mike didn’t shake. He pressed a finger to his earpiece.

  “We can start letting them in,” he said to the other ticket-taker.

  The bar-code readers beeped like a heart monitor with each ticket. Kids began to file past, full of mirth and excitement.

  “We met?” Jason repeated, his hand still extended. “You showed me the fire truck?”

  Mike lit up.

  “Ichabod!”

  Ugh. Adults.

  “What can I do for you, buddy?”

  He still didn’t shake. Jason dropped his hand.

  “I just wanted to say how sorry I was to hear about Debbie.”