Sleepy Hollow: Rise Headless and Ride

by Richard Gleaves

  Children wandered the streets below, dressed as witches and skeletons and beings with magical powers. Yes. All Hallow’s Eve. So innocent, so trusting: a night when evil is just a game and children roam the night with certainty – or hope – that nothing monstrous exists.

  Let some poor child be fortunate enough to find a real Monster tonight, she thought. Let some exile find a Monster to work their retribution. Let some orphan or abused castaway find a Monster – as Agathe had found her Horseman.

  She drew herself together, solidified. Now she remembered clearly: the morning after that fateful Halloween night in seventeen-ninety. She had stood at the side of the Philipse millpond, looking towards the church, and she had felt the Monster’s eyes upon her back. She remembered turning, seeing the severed head floating in the murk, caught in the roots of a poplar tree, watching her with veiled grey-blue eyes. She had lifted it, gazed at it, and she had found that face handsome.

  Afterwards, how the little burghers and shop-keeps and petty deacons had bowed when she passed. They had bowed to her, to little Agathe Van Ripper, once their inferior. They had bowed to the mill worker orphaned by the war. They had bowed to the flour-splashed waif they’d abused and despised. They had bowed to the Lady Van Brunt, the wife of Hermanus and true architect of his fortune. They would bow again.

  She sought the Horseman with her thoughts, her Monster, her servant. She felt his spirit there in the burying ground of the Old Dutch Church. She bade him to rise, be strong.

  I have made my sacrifices.

  On the night when the boy had opened the cellar and released her, she had gone into the blonde girl – the one named Flight – even as the slut had fondled her lover by the millpond. The girl had been weak, but Agathe had been strong enough, once within her host, to tear the stiff wire from the hood of the vehicle and pierce the man’s eye with it. That had been her first sacrifice.

  The blonde herself had been next to die. The fireman had been a more powerful host, though less compliant. He had fought Agathe from within, threatening to drive her from his body. Moral strength. Difficult to overpower. Yet that second deed had been accomplished and the girl’s blood had washed into the water. To feed Agathe’s Horseman, to make him strong.

  She raised her arms.

  Rise… she called. The boy is the last of your enemies. The last Crane. Take him...

  She felt her Monster answer. She felt him gathering together.

  The grave-rubbing danced across the attic, whipped in the air, turning, twisting, capering, loving this dance macabre – this rollicking Witch’s Sabbath. Its lover wind thrust it backward – through Agathe’s form – and flattened it against the glass of the window. The rubbing trembled there with joy, or fear, or anticipation.

  The setting sun shone through the letters.

  WILLIAM CRANE

  Soldier. Died 1792.

  Yes, take the boy. The last descendant of the man who killed you.

  Take the head of the last Crane child and throw it into the Pocantico River…

  …just as they did to yours…

  #

  The door of storage unit 327 rattled in its tracks. Hadewych slipped inside and pulled the door shut. He crept in, edging around boxes of cracked dishes and stolen library books.

  Let Valerie evict me. I’ve been moving out for weeks. I have somewhere better to go.

  417 Gory Brook.

  Dylan’s home, once; mine soon.

  Long ago, he had made a daily pilgrimage to stare longingly at the place. He’d attempted to scrape together the money to buy it. On a factory worker’s salary. He had gone without clothes and movies and vacations. He’d denied his son. He’d denied his wife. He’d made foolish little trips to the bank to deposit his weekly pittance. He’d prostrated himself before officious pricks and begged them for a mortgage. He’d done everything right. What a good little boy he had been. What a fool. And now, with a few shortcuts… the house would be his, outright. He was half-owner already.

  “There’s no magic to make it eighteen-fifty for us, son.”

  You were wrong, Mother.

  I will recover all the Van Brunt possessions. I will have the house, and the reliquary, and everything else. And I will have the Pyncheon Legacy, too, in time.

  The Legacy would require one more unthinkable act… two, if you count the boy himself. But Hadewych looked forward to the end of the boy. He could think of that act with great satisfaction. It was just too bad that Jason would have to live, for now, until the rest was ready.

  Hadewych was still angry from the funeral. Zef had asked to drive – Hadewych had been so lead-footed and erratic on the way home.

  How dare Valerie steal from me? How dare she? I trusted her, or at least trusted in her foolishness.

  He would have to be more careful.

  How fortunate that he had rented this unit before the bitch broke into his papers. She might have found the Treasure. She alone, of all people, would have known what it was. And what might she have done? Break it open? Take the skull to be blessed and buried? Yes, she would have thrown the power away, and for what? To assuage her own fear of the dark? Stupid, paranoid, selfish cow.

  He found the storage chest he’d bought from Navy surplus, with money nicked from Valerie’s purse.

  Still locked.

  He relaxed. He twisted his key and opened it. He pulled away the blood-spattered pillowcase. The reliquary sat inside, untouched.

  Good.

  Oh, Brom had been a fool to lock it away.

  He couldn’t blame Dylan for murdering his father in the end, after Brom had denied him this wonderful thing. Brom had no right. Dylan had not raised the Horseman on Halloween. He had not killed Absalom. He had not been responsible. Dylan? Commit such an obvious act? Don’t insult the man’s intelligence. Someone else had called the ghost. Or it had risen and destroyed Crane for its own reasons…

  Dylan’s letter – his last letter from Confederate prison – lay safe inside the chest.

  I should have kept all the letters here. One foolish mistake. But no real harm done, except…

  He slipped the pieces of the Brom letter into the chest.

  Valerie will pay for that.

  He was about to close the chest again when he noticed a faint light coming from the reliquary. He stood, frowning. He found the light switch, and plunged the space into darkness. Yes. The reliquary glowed with cold white light. The letters had returned. The letters burning from within the metal.

  But those should only glow when the Horseman is about to rise.

  He lifted the reliquary. He’d forgotten how heavy it was. He sat on a box of books and held the Treasure in his lap. He cradled it, as he had once cradled Zef at feeding time.

  “No, no,” Hadewych said. “Shh. Sleep. I haven’t summoned you.”

  The glass cleared, as Dylan had promised that it would.

  “No. No. Go back to sleep.”

  Hadewych stared at the back of the skull within, at the spidery river-map of the sagittal suture. He rotated the reliquary. The back teeth came into view. The gold corner tore a stripe from the cold light. Hadewych turned the thing fully around and stared into the Horseman’s eye sockets –

  He heard words in his mind, words he could not understand – yet did. Not the language, only the meaning. The meaning of the words and the emotion behind them, which was Hate.

  “Kill… who?” said Hadewych in a tiny whisper.

  The name hissed between the grinning teeth.

  “No,” said Hadewych. “I need him.”

  The name came again.

  “It’s not time. Not yet.”

  Again.

  “I forbid it.”

  The reliquary shone in his hands.

  I don’t – I don’t – I don’t control it.

  Hadewych Van Brunt became terrified by the thing, all at once – terrified of what he cradled in his arms, terrified that he’d brought it into the world, terrified that he was responsible for it. Terrified th
at he would be to blame for anything it chose to do. He regretted everything, suddenly. The deceptions, the thefts, the forgeries, the false kisses, the phony charm, the murder of Eliza, the murders to come. He regretted every shortcut he’d ever taken, every action that had led him to this moment. The truth struck him blind. He had birthed and raised this evil thing. His life would now be yoked to its will. He was the steed and this ghost would ride him wherever it wished.

  He saw himself. He saw himself – for once – with perfect clarity, as if the glass had cleared and this harsh light had burned away his own flesh to reveal the soul within. He was not the victim of an unjust system, striving to regain his rightful due. He was not the scion of a great family reclaiming his place in the world. No. He was a cheap, frightened gigolo crouching in the darkness of a steel cage, absolutely alone and holding pure evil in his hands.

  He felt immense loathing. Loathing for what he had become. And pity, too. He remembered Valerie’s pity for him. He felt pity for his son. Pity that Zef should have such a father, and fear that his boy should ever see him as he now saw himself. He shoved the reliquary back inside the pillowcase. The light glowed through the bloodstains. He threw the thing into the chest. He locked the lid, blindly, by touch.

  His hands seemed to glow now, to burn just as Brom had written. St. Elmo’s fire. No. Nothing saintly about it. Flames of Hell. The red glow of hot metal, as if –

  – as if the rider had branded him.

  He sank to the floor and lay on the cold, cold, metal. The ghostly flames spindled away from his fingertips and vanished. The little cube was dark again. Only a faint spear of light fell from the keyhole of the trunk. It fell across a cardboard box marked “Baby Clothes and Mementos.”

  What’s done is done, he thought. If I am evil, damned, cursed, it’s for Zef’s sake that I am. Oh, I have failed him so often. So, so often. Let me win, this once. Let me be successful in this, at least. Let me win a future for my boy. Let me gain the whole world… even if I… even if I loseth my soul…

  Hadewych brought his knees to his chest. His right thumb circled the ring finger of his left hand, over and over.

  But he had to cover his ears, finally. He couldn’t bear the sound any longer. Even over the frantic pumping of his heart and lungs and tear ducts he could still hear the thing hissing inside the chest…

  …Jason Crane…

  …Jason Crane…

  …Jason Crane…

  …Jason Crane…

  #

  Jason closed his eyes as the dirt fell into the grave. He imagined himself down there, alongside Eliza. The dirt was a tornado battering the door of their storm cellar. He held her and kept her safe until it had passed over.

  The backhoe finished its work and fell silent. The sky stopped falling in. Jason opened his eyes and inhaled life again.

  That had been the worst of it.

  The workers took up their shovels and cleared the rest of the dirt from the graveside pile. They took the boards away and fluffed the grass beneath. They covered the grave with Eliza’s flowers and carried their tools to the truck.

  And she was buried.

  “Do you want to ride with us?” Joey said.

  “No. I can’t leave her yet. I need a few minutes alone.” Jason pointed to the top of the slope, to the aqueduct trail above the cemetery. “I can get home that way, right?”

  “You can’t get through the fence,” Joey said. He knelt and drew a map in the mud. “Go back over the bridge, okay? Hang a left. That’s south. There’s a gate next to the Old Dutch Church, but it’ll be locked by now. You’ll have to climb up the embankment, cut through the graves at the old burying ground, then you’ll be on Broadway.”

  “Got it.”

  “But you’ll still have a long walk home, Jase. If you need a ride, come look for the lanterns. I’ll give you a lift if you can wait until after the tour.”

  “Oh, right. Your lantern tour. Happy Halloween,” Jason said, his voice morose.

  Joey answered in kind. “Happy Halloween. You’re leaving tonight?”

  “Yup. Post haste.”

  Joey nodded. They stood in silence.

  “But I’ll e-mail you,” said Jason. “I’ll e-mail when I know where I am.”

  “You gonna be okay?”

  Jason shrugged. “I’ll try to be.”

  One of the workmen honked the horn of the truck.

  “Go. Go,” said Jason, offering his hand.

  Joey took it. “I’m going to miss you, Spidey,” he said.

  They broke the handshake and stood, side-by-side, looking in different directions.

  “Zef’s an idiot,” Jason said, finally.

  “So’s Kate,” said Joey.

  Each punched the other in the shoulder. Joey gave a final wave and climbed in the truck.

  The engine started, the truck clopped over the bridge and Jason was alone.

  He slipped to the cold ground. It was wet but he didn’t care. He drew his backpack into his lap and hugged it. A small sign stuck up from the earth nearby, like a seed package on a stick to mark what had been planted.

  Eliza Merrick, it read.

  He unzipped the backpack. He’d meant to put the Sketch-Book in the coffin. But he was glad he hadn’t. Eliza would have been pissed off considering what she’d paid for it. He saw poor Absalom’s writing inside the front cover. What did Annabel think, when her husband never came home? Did she guess that he had died by the hand of the Horseman?

  His gloves were muddy. He stripped them off. But he saw no vision when he touched the book.

  He leaned against the birch tree and opened the pages. He remembered the night Eliza had given it to him. In the RV, on their first night at Gory Brook, when they’d been locked out and had camped in the driveway. “Read it close,” she had said, whispering from the bunk below. “Read it close. Pay attention.”

  He found the page, and he began to read to Eliza, in the tone of a bedtime story:

  “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; Found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker.

  “A pleasing land of drowsy head it was,

  Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;

  And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,

  Forever flushing round a summer sky.

  – CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.

  “In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic.

  “Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose – ”

  Jason stopped to listen to the Pocantico. It did murmur. And it did make him feel a little drowsy. He looked back to the page.

  “ – and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.”

  Yes, he heard the birds.

  “I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noontime, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world an
d its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.”

  Jason’s hand brushed over Eliza’s flowers.

  “From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of SLEEPY HOLLOW, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere.”

  Jason’s head slipped to rest against the birch.

  “Some say that the place was bewitched by a High German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols…

  “The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance…”