“Go to hell,” she muttered. She shot the finger at her rearview mirror.
#
Across town, James Osorio dreamt that all the bodies in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery yawned, stretched, and turned on their sides. He would discuss this with his wife Pat in the morning and he would discover that she had dreamt the same thing.
#
Somewhere in the hills above Sleepy Hollow a pack of wolves looked up and howled at the moon. Down below, Charley the poodle heard them and answered.
#
In Joey’s room, Booger dug a hole and hid.
#
Something in the attic of 417 Gory Brook Road stirred and began to laugh triumphantly.
#
The blood called to the Hessian, as it always did.
He pushed through the sod, climbing towards the night. He clawed through the bodies of six Colonial soldiers. These had tried for centuries to hold him down but they had failed time and again. He was the dominant spirit of the Old Dutch Burial Ground, and commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air. He could not be contained, not when blood was in the water, not when he was at full power, not when he was summoned –
– not when a Crane was in the Hollow and the Hallows drew nigh.
#
Valerie turned the next-to-last card of the Celtic Cross. This was the card that signified all The Fool’s hopes… and fears.
Judgment.
An angel blows its trumpet and the ground cracks. The dead rise at The Fool’s feet. The tombs are opened and The Resurrection is at hand.
Rejoice, the dead proclaim, for He is Risen.
Her shaking hand went to her valve. The valve that was her trumpet.
She did not rejoice.
Because Valerie Maule knew who He was.
#
“Jason…” said Kate, “it’s okay.”
Jason wiped his face. Kate knelt over him. She reached into the dark place where he had hidden and offered her hand.
“It’s your Gift, isn’t it?” she said, her voice low. “You can’t control your Gift?”
He didn’t care how she knew it. He nodded.
“I’ll get you out of here,” said Kate.
She reached for him, but he pulled his hand away. She nodded, understanding, and took him by both elbows. She brought him to his feet and led him into the maze.
#
Eliza had lost her way on side streets. She couldn’t see the signs. She hit the curb and her purse fell to the floor, spilling papers and pills and nail polish bottles. She rolled down the window.
Gory Brook Road.
There. She had found it.
But the way steepened unnaturally. She pumped the gas pedal. The car inched forward. Was she riding the parking brake? No. She could smell the gas. She’d have flooded the engine of a lesser car. The house was in view now but it grew no closer. She floored the Mercedes. It flew forward, overshot the driveway and careened across the lawn toward the sycamore. She twisted the wheel and the car spun, clipping the tree with the back fender and spraying the bay window with mud.
She turned off the ignition and almost fell out of the car, shaken but unhurt.
Thank you, German engineering.
Thunder rolled. A storm approached. A tree branch fell, mortally wounded.
Pain shot through Eliza’s hand. Was she hurt? Was it her arthritis? She held her palm up to moonlight. She watched as a wound opened there and bled something fierce. Oh, she had cut herself.
The wind grew stronger, louder. Someone’s shutters started banging. The noise sounded like a fist pounding on a door – the storm seeking shelter from itself.
The Hollow fell silent.
The wind, the shutters, the branches above, the barking of the dog inside. Nothing.
Had she gone deaf? Was this a stroke?
Oh, Lord no – I have to change the will first. For Jason’s sake.
She heard a single sound: distant but unmistakable.
Hoofbeats.
#
The maze stretched endlessly. Kate batted away stalk after stalk. Jason kept close to her back, making himself as small as possible. Hands reached for him from the corn; actors in masks leapt from corners.
“Not now,” Kate said.
His face pulled into a grimace of fear; muscles in the back of his skull began cramping. A leaf hit him in the eye. He couldn’t take it – the lights, the shouts, the screams! He pushed past Kate and ran ahead.
He threw kids aside, shook the walls of the maze, found the end of it, stumbled into a womb-like chute of inflated fabric – clawed through claustrophobic blackness – stumbled through a doorway and into moonlight. And there, something rose up out of the shadows before him: the Horseman, dressed in red velvet – raising a double-bladed axe –
Jason punched the actor in the bloody stump of his prosthetic neck.
#
Valerie swept the cards from the bed. She had seen enough. She threw her clothes in her bag, leaving the Tarot reshuffled on the floor.
One card remained on the bedspread – the card predicting the Outcome. She had laid it down, completing the cross, and had known immediately that she had to rush home.
The card was The Ten of Swords.
A corpse lies face down in mud, one hand twisted unnaturally. Ten swords protrude from its back like needles in a pincushion.
She had to get home. Because Hadewych had lied somehow. He had lied to her. And to Eliza. And to the boy. He had lied to everyone.
Jason was never The Fool.
They all were.
And The Fools had been stabbed in the back – by someone with a silver sword.
It began to rain. She slammed the door behind her. The last card trembled and fell among the others.
#
Rain poured on the roof, gathering in gutters to sluice into her front lawn.
Almost there. Almost there.
The hoofbeats grew louder, thundering up the aqueduct trail. Eliza fumbled for the house key, the one with the triangle on it. But her hand bled so heavily that the ring grew slick and she dropped it.
The keys lay on the welcome mat. She reached for them but her body would not bend.
She heard something laughing at her. From upstairs?
The back door…
The back door might be open. She stepped back down into the mud. Thunder galloped. Hooves boomed.
She stepped in puddles. Her hair melted down her face. She pushed water from her eyes with a bloody hand. She tasted copper.
Oh, no.
The staircase at the rear of the house might have been Everest, or the stair to St. Peter’s gates. She couldn’t imagine climbing that far. Not as sore as she already was.
But she tried.
One step.
Two.
Three.
She heard the thing galloping across her front lawn.
Four.
Five.
Six.
She pushed her legs down with her hands.
Seven.
Eight.
She pulled herself along by the rail. She couldn’t breathe.
Nine.
Something popped in her hip.
Ten.
He’s here.
She knew what the thing was as soon as it thundered into the yard below. She knew without looking. The hooves, the cracking laugh, the jack-o’-lantern that careened off the wall next to her. She knew.
The bastard will just have to come up and get me.
Eleven.
Twelve.
The greatest achievement of her life, she felt, was reaching that thirteenth stair. She felt immensely proud of herself for climbing so far and grasping the doorknob.
Even though it was locked.
She saw Charley at the window.
“Be good to Jason,” she told the poodle.
The rider had dismounted. She felt a step on the wood below.
She turned slowly. From where she stood she could see the Old Dutch Church. She could see the manor
, lit for the Horseman’s Hollow. She could even see the cemetery from here.
As she faced Him (Can you face something that has no face?) she heard Bing Crosby whispering in her ear, reciting the last few words from Disney’s 1948 classic The Adventures of Ichabod and Mister Toad.
“Rumors persisted,” said Bing, “that Ichabod was still alive, married to a wealthy widow in a distant county. But of course the good Dutch settlers refused to believe such nonsense, for they knew the schoolmaster had been spirited away…”
“…by the Headless Horseman,” Eliza whispered.
Oh, how she’d loved that film.
Silly old woman.
#
Jason sat shivering in the rain. A security-ghost shouted at him. The crowd around them squealed and ran for shelter. He couldn’t hear, though. He was shell-shocked.
“Jason!” Kate came down the path, trying to shield herself from the rain. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“Is he with you?” said the security-ghost. “’Cause he’s in trouble.”
Rain had collected in the ghost’s tricorn hat. When it leaned forward, the water hit Jason in the face, waking him up.
“Eliza!” he yelled and shot to his feet.
He pushed past the guard and ran. He ran out of the event, across the parking lot, pushed through a line of kids, knocking umbrellas from their hands. He heard Kate calling his name but he couldn’t stop. He had no thought but to get home. He ran out of the parking lot.
The rain weighed him down. He stripped off his jacket and threw it in the middle of Broadway. He ran uphill, pushing against a terrible weight – in slow motion, dreamlike.
Yes, let this be an intense and terrible dream. I can forget dreams.
But he couldn’t wake up from this.
He pumped his legs, wiped a cup of water from his face, leapt a fence, stumbled through a backyard koi pond, fought wind and lightning and thunder and his own burning lungs.
Hail fell on Gory Brook Road.
He saw the sycamore peeking over the roof of his house. He would be home soon and Eliza would scold him for being so foolish and she would make cocoa and –
He saw the Mercedes on the lawn, back fender crumpled against the sycamore. The driver’s door hung open, no one inside. He bounded onto the porch and fumbled for his house key.
“Eliza? Eliza!” he yelled.
Where were his keys? His pockets were empty and –
The jacket. My keys were in the jacket –
He’d made a fist to break the window when he saw something glittering on the mat:
Eliza’s keys lay there, covered in blood.
He seized the keys and twisted them in the knob.
He slammed his palm across light switches, blinking against the sudden sting of light. He ran from room to room, leaping over furniture. Charley circled and jumped and barked. He brushed her aside and leapt the stairs three at a time.
“Jason?” came a voice from downstairs.
“Eliza?” he said. “Thank God.”
Lightning flashed in his bedroom window, and by the time the thunder answered he was downstairs again.
Kate had called his name. She shivered on the front porch.
He groaned in disappointment and whirled around.
“Eliza?”
Charley yowled. Jason ran to the kitchen and found the dog leaping at the back door.
Oh, God… the stairs…
“The stairs.”
This is a dangerous stair, he had thought on his first day at Gory Brook.
He turned the knob.
The rain battered his cheek as he stood on the landing. Kate’s hand fell on his shoulder. The storm had passed. The muddy yard sparkled with hailstones. At the bottom of the stairs, floating among those stars, lay the unnaturally twisted figure of Eliza Merrick.
#
Zef brushed a scattering of garbage out of the armchair and onto the floor – a beer can, a wet newspaper, crumbs of chips and sandwich crust. He turned on the television. His father stood behind him serving the pizza. Zef could see Hadewych reflected in the TV screen, superimposed over the black and white images of Dr. Frankenstein. The Halloween programming had begun.
His father came up behind, passed a plate of pizza into Zef’s hands and leaned down. He kissed Zef’s head and the boy jerked away.
I hate when he does that.
“You came home early,” said Hadewych.
“The Hollow was rained out.”
“How is Kate?”
“She didn’t go. She wasn’t feeling good.”
Zef reached for a slice of his pizza but Hadewych wrapped an arm around his chest, hugging him painfully.
“Have I told you how much you mean to me?”
“Let me go,” said Zef. He didn’t want Hadewych to smell the whiskey on his breath.
“Listen to me. Family is everything. You’ll understand when you have children. Nothing is more important in life. Everything I’ve done has been for your future. For you and your kids.”
“Hell. What did you do to your hand?”
“Oh, this?”
Zef pushed Hadewych away. The wound in his father’s palm wasn’t bleeding, but it was as livid as something you’d see on a statue of Christ.
“Minor accident,” said Hadewych. “It’s healing fast.”
“You need stitches.”
“Nah,” said Hadewych, plopping on the sofa with his pizza. “It’s loads better already.” He giggled, and Zef thought he sounded hysterical.
Wow. He’s as drunk as I am.
Zef ate his pizza and watched Frankenstein. Hadewych held his hand under the lamp, staring at his wound as if it were something miraculous. He turned to Zef and grinned.
“You know,” he said, “I hardly feel anything at all.”
27 MORE THAN A LITTLE BIT
Kate didn’t know what to do.
She sat with Jason, keeping his hopes up, rubbing his back in circles. He barely registered her presence or touch. He sat cross-legged in a plastic chair, staring into space, tearing a travel magazine to confetti.
After they had discovered Eliza, Kate had called the ambulance. Jason had run to the yard to kneel at Eliza’s side. He’d checked her pulse, he’d held her hand, he’d shielded her from the rain with his body – while wetting her body with his tears. Kate found a blanket and joined him. They knelt in the mud together and made a tent over the old woman. They shivered. Jason kissed the white forehead and wailed until the sirens came.
He rode in the back of the ambulance with Eliza. Kate followed behind in the Mercedes. The car started easily enough, but it stuck in the mud of the front yard. She found a branch that had fallen and shoved it under one of the back tires. That got it going, though the car slid dangerously before it gained the driveway.
Once she’d reached Phelps Memorial Hospital she’d found Jason easily enough, ranting at an admitting clerk who’d grilled him about insurance paperwork. Fortunately, Kate had rescued Eliza’s crazy-quilt purse from the passenger-side floorboards. They found a Blue Cross card inside and blows were averted. Jason fell silent like guns after battle. He sank into the orange chair and stared at the hospital logo on the wall.
They heard no news for over two hours. Their clothes had dried except for chilly seams. The waiting room was warm but that just made it more difficult to stay awake. She and Jason sat bolt upright when anyone approached. The nurses would loom over them, wring their hands, but walk away without a word. This happened twice before Kate realized that a dispenser for hand sanitizer hung on the wall behind their heads.
Zef answered his phone at around three a.m. He was pissed off at being awakened. Kate didn’t respond in kind, though, thinking that he had a right to be angry with her for not meeting him after the Hollow as they had agreed. His voice sounded slurred and she guessed he’d been drinking. She hated that about him. He had a great future, but would screw up their life together if he didn’t stop hitting the bottle.
Jaso
n didn’t talk. He hugged the purse. He looked as though he were watching a sad foreign film – staring straight ahead, glancing down occasionally to read subtitles. Kate made conversation with a fat man on her right awaiting the birth of his sixth child. He didn’t seem too excited about it. She guessed that by number six the novelty wears away in tandem with the bank account.
When Zef and Hadewych walked in around four a.m., her relief overwhelmed her. The situation required an adult. The expectant father slid aside to make room for Zef, who slipped an arm around Kate’s shoulders. Hadewych spoke with the doctors and reported back.
“It’s quite bad,” he said. “She may not last the night.”
Kate glanced at Jason but he didn’t react.
“Did she – break her back? Or her neck?” she whispered, reaching for Jason’s limp hand.
“She didn’t break anything, amazingly enough,” said Hadewych. “She has excellent bones for her age. She’s very bruised. She has no internal bleeding or – ”
“So what’s killing her?” Jason snapped, breaking his trance.
Hadewych knelt. He put hands on Jason’s knees, brushing Kate away.
“’Liza’s heart is racing. Adrenaline’s pouring through her. She’s fighting… something.”
“Fighting what?” said Jason, attempting to brush Hadewych away in turn. Hadewych remained crouched, looking prepared to leap on Jason if he were to bolt.
“Easy, son,” Hadewych said.
“We suspect a stroke,” said a man in scrubs. He wiped his forehead and raised one surgical glove. “Doctor Tamper. I’m the attending. We can’t find the cause but it’s ramping up her nervous system. It might be a blood clot in the amygdala, that’s – ”
“The fear center,” said Zef, earning a nod from Hadewych.
“Right,” said the doctor.
“And – what’s that doing to her?” said Jason.
“All her fight-or-flight responses are off the charts. The simplest way to put it is that… she’s being frightened to death.”
Sleepy Hollow: Rise Headless and Ride Page 24