“I’ve had plenty of men come sniffing for my money,” she said, “but…” her voice broke, “…you were like a son to me.”
Hadewych had dropped all masks. She saw ruthlessness in his face. And contempt.
“I’m not your son,” he said. “I’m a Van Brunt. My family built that house. It was always mine. And it will stay that way.”
She nodded and backed towards the door, feeling old and feeble.
“I’ll call the cops,” she said as she left. She felt more confident outside. Hadewych followed her, watching from the landing as she hobbled down the steps.
“I had full power of attorney, remember? You couldn’t be bothered with paperwork. You were too caught up in The Project. So everything I did was legal, and…” She looked up. “…I think old lady Merrick is a little senile, don’t you?”
She hurried down the steps.
“Be careful not to fall, ’Liza.” Hadewych called casually. “Someone might have heard you shouting and we can’t afford a scandal.”
She turned at the bottom and raised an uncertain finger.
“I’ll get you, you son of a bitch. Even if I have to hire somebody.”
“You’re beautiful when you’re angry, dear.”
“I’ll get you.”
“Not if I get you first,” he whispered. He waved goodbye and slipped inside.
#
As soon as he crossed the threshold of the mill, Jason knew that he’d lost control. His fingers brushed the wood of the gristmill and his gift began to run away with itself. Just inside the door, a bloody Marie Antoinette leapt at him. He fell back, startled, and grabbed a wooden beam.
A fake corpse lay on the grindstone but it faded before Jason’s eyes. The gears of the mill were turning now. The disks of stone began to rotate. Cracked wheat spilled from between them. Figures blurred past. Jason saw a black man in a purple tunic collecting the wheat. The man’s sleeve caught in the machinery. “Pull the nut! Pull the nut!” he screamed. The gears bit away his fingers. He wailed and wrested the stump of his hand away. Blood spattered Jason’s legs. The man clutched the stump and watched helplessly as his severed fingers were ground into meal and the wheat went red.
Jason wrestled his own his hand away from the beam. He had screamed in terror. Marie Antoinette took credit for the scream. She bowed and the onlookers applauded her epic scare.
Jason glanced down. There was no blood on his clothes.
Kate stood at a second door looking back, her face full of concern.
#
Zef wandered up Broadway. He turned and saw the manor glowing in the distance. He had ridden to the Hollow with Kate and Carlos, with Gunsmoke behind in the trailer. He should have waited for Kate like he told her he would; at least he wouldn’t have to walk home. But he felt no regret. He needed to be alone. He needed to get away from her.
He didn’t want to hurt Kate’s feelings and – he did love her, didn’t he? He enjoyed kissing her and touching her. He wanted to feel some profound connection with her. He hated not feeling it. Sometimes he could almost force himself to feel the passion he wanted to feel. But half the time all he felt was the satisfaction of an actor who’d given a good performance.
Zef hated himself.
He took the flask from his pocket and drained it. He knew the burning sensation in his chest was only whiskey, but it helped him imagine another life, a better life in which he felt a burning desire for Kate – just like everyone expected him to.
Just like he wanted to.
Thank God for the firewater, he thought. Without it I’d be nothing but ash.
#
The smell of incense became overpowering, but Valerie couldn’t stop to put it out. She flipped more cards, gasping.
Such a powerful reading. So many major Arcana.
The Moon.
A time of transformation.
The Hanged Man…
#
Jason felt he was being targeted. Every specter, every monster, every green-faced hag caught him unawares. Creatures jumped from the shadows, barked in his ear and cackled behind, making him stumble and lose his way.
He stepped to one side, trying to collect his wits. Across the field he thought he could make out one of the security-ghosts standing motionless. The figure blended into the background: a man-shaped hole in a charcoal backdrop.
Jason blinked and the ghost vanished
“Long live King George,” shouted a voice to his left.
Jason turned but no one was there.
He felt sick and dizzy. He had to get out. He stepped into the stream of kids and they carried him along – down a chute of muslin and wood and into the presence of Satan.
#
Eliza sat in the Mercedes, shaking. She had been such a silly old woman. So gullible. So taken in.
She started the car.
Go home. Lock the door. Call the police. Find Jason and leave this town.
Why didn’t she listen when the boy nagged her to get a portable phone?
She slipped the Mercedes into gear and backed down the driveway. An oncoming car blew its horn. It almost clipped her. Her cataracts stole her night vision, and she was crying.
What was she going to do? Calm down. She would calm down. Drive home. First things first. She turned on her lights and eased onto the road. She drove past the park and up to the intersection at Broadway. Cars whizzed in both directions. The headlights and taillights were haloed by her cataracts – just red and white circles bearing down on her from either side. She waited for the light to change.
My will…
She gasped.
I have to change my will…
#
Hadewych lifted the cardboard box from the closet where he’d hidden it. The bundles of soiled sheets and pornography fell aside. It had not been a good idea, he decided, to stack the magazines on top. Zef was seventeen now. He might have searched out his father’s stash. But the Playboys and Hustlers sat untouched.
It might be fun to check Zef’s browser history sometime.
Hadewych smiled. He had been young once.
He was avoiding admitting what he intended to do. Ever since he’d met Eliza and had decided that she would be the means to his end of restoring the Van Brunt fortune, he had known it would come to this. But he hadn’t expected it so quickly.
Thank God Valerie is out of town. Eliza would be downstairs telling her everything.
He hadn’t told Valerie a quarter of what he knew. He’d shared half of Brom’s letter to Dylan – but not the other half – and had hidden the letter Dylan had written to his own son, the letter that explained the Treasure and what it could do.
But – had he ever believed the family legends?
“There’s no magic to make it 1850 for us, son,” his mother had said.
He found himself shivering. An unpleasant pit opened in his stomach.
Yes, I believe. Now that I’ve seen the thing…
He had hoped that the Eliza situation would… resolve itself. Without… intervention. She was so old and so careless with her papers. But he had underestimated her.
He sighed. He did admire the old woman just a little.
Stop this now, came the atrophied voice of his conscience. You still can!
He entered the bathroom and lowered the box onto the dingy sink.
Stop. No. Don’t do this to the boy!
To which boy? To Jason? Or to my own son?
He didn’t care about Jason. Jason would have to go, eventually. Would Hadewych’s actions hurt Zef? He didn’t plan to get caught. The whole point of using the Treasure was that he would never be caught. Zef would never find out, either. Hadewych thought of the Legacy, of Eliza’s will. That greedy passion awoke in him again as it had months ago – that passion for the easy score, the big win. The shortcut.
I can’t stop now. This will help Zef. This will assure his future.
Hadewych opened the box.
#
Valerie swallowed the
last of the milk. It was sour now.
The next card represents those with whom the boy – The Fool – interacts.
She turned the card of influence.
The Devil.
#
Eddie Martinez perched on his throne a dozen feet in the air. His bat wings blotted away the moon and the stars. Flames of Hell lit him from below. His chest was bare and painted crimson. He wore a necklace of finger bones. The ram’s horns made Jason feel that this Devil could rear and crack a man’s skull open with one head butt.
Yellow eyes blazed with reflected flame.
If Eddie’s body crawled with lice, he didn’t show it.
I will not blink – those yellow eyes snarled. I will not scratch. Lice can gnaw at me until I am only bone but I am Satan and I will not lose to you.
Jason could feel the hatred and contempt there. He tried to hold the gaze but his eyes began to water.
Crying already? You know you got no chance – said the yellow eyes. Evil wins in the end. Evil always wins. You know why? ’Cause Evil lifts at four in the morning. Evil eats raw egg and whey protein and bloody hearts. Evil shoots itself full of anabolic steroids and benches three times its body weight while Good wastes the day in some library. Satan is coming for you, Jason Crane – with an army of jocks at my command. You pathetic nerd. You loser. You nothing. You better run when the bell rings, kid, ’cause we are going to kick your ass after school.
Jason blinked.
Satan broke into a triumphant sneer.
Jason staggered away from the throne, looking for an exit, and fell into Ichabod’s schoolhouse.
Ichabod stood before his chalkboard. He held a birch rod in one hand and a lantern in the other. The birch was bloody. A row of dead children sat at the desks, skin cut to ribbons by Ichabod’s whip. The jump rope song played over and over. La la la la la la la – when will school be over – la la la la la la la – we’d rather be out in the sun – la la la la la laaaa – but we would rot much quicker then – every one – every one. La la la la la la la –
Ichabod raised the lantern to confirm Jason’s identity.
“THE HESSIAN IS COMING,” he said.
26 RISE HEADLESS AND RIDE
It might have been a lantern once, but was encrusted with gold now. Layer upon layer of gold, fresh from the forge – each layer building upon the layers of metal and blood beneath it. It had been hammered and shaped, this secret thing. Agathe had made it herself. She had built for her Treasure a reliquary modeled after the gilt cases she had seen in the Catholic churches. She was Dutch herself, and therefore Protestant, but this thing would be a home for evil – so a papist reliquary had seemed appropriate to her.
A reliquary is a sacred vessel, an earthly container for the remains of a saint – for a finger-bone of St. Francis, perhaps, or a chip of St. Adolphus’s skull, or a knot of viscera from the belly of the Madonna. Such remains are supposed to possess healing powers and to bestow blessings upon the church that obtains them. Reliquaries are made to drive away evil spirits.
But not this one.
This was the Devil’s own reliquary, built not to dispel evil but to gather it.
Hadewych peered through the smoky glass. He felt an urge to smash the container against the tile of his bathroom, to pry the gold away, to see for himself the source of the Van Brunt power and glory.
He longed to rip the thing open and gaze…
…upon the head of Agathe’s Horseman.
The head of the Horseman waited within, its flesh rotted away to bare bone. That smudge – was that the eye socket? Did the eye still sit in it? Was it open – ? Or closed, waiting to awaken?
In the medicine cabinet he found razor blades. Small vents pierced the top of the reliquary at the bottom of a shallow depression in the gold, just as Dylan had described. Something thick and black encrusted the edges of the tiny holes.
Hadewych held his hand over the thing and pulled the razor blade across his palm. Blood ran fast from his closed fist as if he were squeezing a heart. It gathered in the reservoir and dripped into the Devil’s lantern.
#
Ichabod struck the slate with his whip.
“THE HESSIAN IS COMING,” he said.
The Hessian? What the hell is the –
But Jason remembered his history, and understood.
Hessians were murderous servants of King George. Fearful German horsemen – mercenaries who killed for fun. Women, children, babies in their cradles…
And one of them had lost his head.
The rotting children rose and reached for Jason. La la la laaa…
He turned and ran.
“HE IS COMING SOON,” said Ichabod.
Jason pushed through the crowd, deeper into the bowels of the mill. His hand brushed wood and he heard a whip crack. Had this been the slave quarters? No – he saw spectral girls in the lofts around him, brushing hair, talking to each other. Was this the… dormitory?
To Jason’s right, an actor in an executioner’s mask drew an electrical device across a wall, throwing sparks. The present and past overlapped. He saw the ghost of a girl pass through the executioner. A group of kids tried to pass through Jason and knocked him over. He grabbed a wooden crossbeam with both hands.
Agathe lay there screaming and struggling.
Agathe? How?
She was young in this vision, with porcelain features and auburn hair that tangled in the straw. A toothless figure lay on top of her, covering her mouth. She cried for help.
Someone. Anyone.
Her attacker drew a hand-scythe from his pocket. Agathe saw the curving blade and fell silent. The claw fell from her mouth and unlaced her blouse impatiently. Her tears ran from eyes that glowed with hate. Her lips moved soundlessly as she fell back, staring at the ceiling.
“THE HESSIAN IS COMING,” whispered Ichabod from somewhere behind.
Firelight played over Agathe’s face. Something was burning.
Jason followed her gaze. The executioner and his sparking whip had vanished. So had the ghostly girl. An enormous jack-o’-lantern sat on a table – a sagging thing four feet around. Flames leapt upward from its eyes and nose and mouth and caught the ceiling afire.
“I said MOVE, kid!”
Someone shoved Jason. His hands tore from the wood. He saw burn marks where his fingers had been. His head throbbed. He staggered deeper into darkness, bewildered by skulls and corpses and severed heads, not knowing which were real and which were not; he hit his knee and battered an elbow as he fell; voices assaulted him from the stone floor. Kids passed, laughing. Coward. He crawled through spider webbing and into the corn maze. There he hid – sobbing beneath a bower of dead stalks.
#
It was not enough. Not enough!
Dylan had described the awakening of the thing. Dylan had explained what to expect. It had not happened.
What had he missed?
The timing was right. Halloween approached – the anniversary of the Horseman’s death. Two people were dead, killed by whatever haunted the waters of Sleepy Hollow. The water-haunting. Similar occurrences had been reported for over a hundred and fifty years, yet no one had noticed the pattern. Hadewych and Valerie had discovered the files at the Historical Society. She called the killings “shark-baiting” since each one bloodied water. They were a mystery that Dylan had never addressed. Had such occurred in Dylan’s day?
As a survivor, Valerie had a unique perspective and a likely explanation. Something existed that wanted to strengthen the Horseman. It possessed people like her mother and used them against their will. Valerie had felt the Horseman drawing her blood. She had felt him absorbing her energy. She had felt him grow stronger.
Valerie had been so invaluable that Hadewych regretted deceiving her – but why end evil when you can harness it? Oh, well. Soon he wouldn’t need her either. Soon he could wash away the stink of her.
Hadewych tightened his fist and let another rivulet fall.
An incantation in Old Dutch
appeared, shimmering from within the gold.
Hadewych’s first experience of magic.
So the legends are true.
He couldn’t read the letters but Dylan had left a translation.
“Rise…” Hadewych whispered.
“Rise…”
Nothing.
“What more do you want from me?” he groaned, panicking.
A spike rose from the top of the reliquary. A rusty nail – sharp as Satan’s horn.
Hadewych knew what he had to do. No small sacrifice would be enough. He glanced at himself in the bathroom mirror and saw tears on his cheek. His breathing grew quick. He raised his palm above the spike.
For Zef.
“Dad? I’m home.” The front door slammed.
Hadewych froze.
“I’m in the bathroom, son,” he called. “I – I ordered a pizza for us!”
“Great. I’m starving.”
Yes. I have to be quick because the pizza man is coming. I have to sign for the pizza. I have to put my signature on the credit card slip. I have to sign for the large pepperoni with extra sauce and a double side order of alibis…
He looked at the spike again.
Oh… thought Hadewych, in that moment just before he did it. Now that Zef is home I won’t even be able to scream.
He raised his palm – a man swearing an oath, if not on a Bible.
He picked up a toothbrush. It would be something to bite, at least.
“Rise headless and ride…” he whispered.
He slipped his bit into his mouth.
One. Two –
His arm came down and the spike shot through the back of his hand.
#
“Goddamn it,” Eliza said. She was crawling. She squinted at the road. The car behind her blew its horn like Gabriel’s own trumpet.
Sleepy Hollow: Rise Headless and Ride Page 23