Hollow Blood

by Austin Dragon

  "Are you certain?" Katrina asked.

  "I'm certain I don't want to talk about something that took place before I was married and before my son was born. I'm certain."

  The head butler returned to the room.

  "Sir, Mr. De Graaf is here to see you. He has Hans Van Ripper and some other men with him and he'd like to speak with Knickerbocker, too."

  Brom was intrigued. "Bring them in then, Jansen."

  When Brom saw De Graaf's face, he put down his cigar on the tray on one of the wall desks knowing that something was wrong.

  "Look at all this," Old Van Tassel said. "What has happened now? I've never seen so much goings on in such a short span of time in all the years I've lived in the Hollow."

  "De Graaf what's wrong?" Brom asked.

  "Is this about that Julian Crane?" Katrina asked, and Brom quickly looked at De Graaf for his answer.

  "No, but it could involve him."

  "I'd say it does a lot more than that," Hans said gruffly.

  "Please, Hans, let me get the Van Brunts up-to-date." He looked at the Allens. "Or would you prefer to?"

  "You're doing fine," the elder Allen said back.

  "These two men are the Allens, father and son," De Graaf introduced. "They rode in this morning looking for the Marshal."

  "What happened that you would need a marshal?" Van Tassel asked.

  "No, they need to find the Marshal, personally."

  The younger Allen was as impatient as Hans Van Ripper to get things moving along and jumped in. He told them briefly about his father's background and his own, living and growing up in Tennessee. He told them about his godfather overwrought about his missing daughter, and how they met Marshal Damian who came into town to tell them that he would take the man to his eldest child, having seen her to be well.

  "The Marshal went all the way to that town to tell the man that he has seen his missing daughter?" Hans asked. "Rather than just send a letter. That's not his territory."

  "We didn't sense anything suspicious about it at the time," the elder Allen said.

  The Van Brunts had the same reaction when the young man recounted how he and his father learned that their godfather's daughter had died two years earlier, and his godfather had not been seen nor heard of since leaving with the Marshal. The Marshal was alive and well doing his duties, but he never saw fit to return to their town to explain what happened. He ended with the fact that two other men who came across the Marshal had also disappeared.

  "What do you believe happened, Mr. Allen?" Katrina asked.

  "I don't want to speculate, ma'am, but I do believe foul play is involved," the elder Allen answered. "We need to confront the Marshal and have him explain himself as to the whereabouts of my son's godfather. I already know he could come up with plausible explanations, but we need him to commit himself to a story and hold him while we verify it. My best friend was not a man to disappear off the earth and leave his affairs unattended to."

  "Mr. Van Brunt," De Graaf began, "we've been inquiring with anyone who had any...issues with the Marshal. Hans was one, and we were told that you were the other. Is that true?"

  Brom hesitated but that only firmly answered the question. He thought for a bit before he began to talk.

  "Back when Ichabod Crane disappeared, before the Marshal was the marshal, he was one of the men in town helping us look for him. He had been a lawman in some town I can't remember, and he took a full account of Ichabod's dress and belongings when he left your party that night." Brom glanced at Old Man Van Tassel before he continued. "The Marshal had interviewed everyone thoroughly, and I looked it over myself and saw that he had added an item. I asked him where the account had come from, and he pulled some name out of the air that I knew was a lie. He said that Ichabod was wearing a red spotted handkerchief, but he wasn't."

  "How can you be so sure, son?" Van Tassel asked.

  "Because it was my handkerchief," Brom answered. "I had one of the girls at the party give it to him to wear when he rode home that night. He didn't take it out and put it on until he was well out of view of the mansion and well on his way."

  "How do you know that?" Katrina asked.

  "Because I saw him wearing it."

  "You mean you saw him wearing it when you set on after him dressing up to look like the Headless Horseman," Katrina added with a stern voice.

  Brom continued his story, upset that he had to finally make these revelations after all this time. "Ichabod was scared out of his wits, but he was alive and well, and he had that handkerchief around his neck. I let him ride off after I threw my pumpkin at him, and that was it."

  Brom was exceedingly uncomfortable as his wife looked at him angrily and Van Tassel looked at him disappointedly.

  "I thought I was the last human to see him alive...until that day," Brom added.

  "Meaning what?" the elder Allen asked.

  "He knew Ichabod was dead," Brom answered. "I remember that I firmly believed at that moment that he had seen his body. The only way he could have known about the handkerchief was if he had seen it with his own eyes."

  "I don't mean to get in the middle of this town's customs," the elder Allen said. "My son and I have heard about your Headless Horseman legend, too, but could a more plausible possibility be that your marshal did something to this Ichabod Crane, instead of this Headless Horseman?"

  Brom was already shaking his head.

  "Why not?" Allen asked.

  "Because I saw it." Brom's answer made everyone freeze.

  "Saw it?" De Graaf asked.

  "How do you think I knew Ichabod was taken?" Brom said angrily. "The thing flew past me...I thought it was a waking dream and I...put it all out of my mind."

  "But it didn't come after you?" Knickerbocker asked.

  Brom shook his head as he looked at his wife. She had a terrified look on her face.

  "It targets only one man at a time," Brom said. "It targeted Ichabod alone. And I was far enough away." He shook his head again. "Again, I put it all out of mind. There was nothing for me to do but...get away and...pretend, to myself especially, that I never saw what I saw."

  Everyone was quiet for a moment thinking about Brom's close encounter.

  "But you suspected this marshal of having some hand in the event?" the younger Allen asked.

  "Yes, but what? I couldn't begin to reason how or why. I simply knew he was someone I personally would keep my distance from," Brom said. "But again, I do believe he saw Ichabod's body."

  Katrina turned to Hans. "What was your story about the Marshal?" she asked.

  "I saw him trying to bury a pile of bloody clothes in the woods. He pretended he wasn't and moved on from there. I checked those woods later on but there wasn't anything. I'm sure he found another spot."

  "And now this Julian Crane person has gone off with this marshal, who used the same story he used with my son's godfather," Allen senior said. "Did not any of you think to warn him to be on the safe side?"

  Hans was silent.

  "What was I to do?" Brom lashed out. "It was not my business, and the man tried to kill me."

  "Who tried to kill you?" Allen asked.

  "Julian Crane!"

  "Why?"

  "He thought I had killed Ichabod Crane."

  "Why didn't you tell him what you knew?" Allen asked.

  "He had already ridden out with the Marshal," De Graaf defended. "Obviously, Mr. Van Brunt had to recover from his ordeal and be with his family."

  "Even if I had a mind to, what would I say?" Brom asked. "Even now, we just have stories, nothing more. These two gentlemen have much more substantial information than us. If the Marshal can't account for your son's godfather, then he could be in serious trouble with the law. Hans and I only had spotted handkerchiefs and piles of bloody clothes—all one man's word against another."

  "But what are we going to do about Julian?" Hans asked.

  "Yes, what about Mr. Crane?" Knickerbocker asked. "We let him go out there with a man who,
let's just be blunt about it, may have killed some innocent men for no cause."

  "Is there any possible way to track them?" Old Van Tassel asked De Graaf.

  "We already thought about it, Mr. Van Tassel. We don't know exactly where they went. All we know is they went north. They could be anywhere."

  "So we're saying that Julian is on his own," Hans said.

  "We're saying that Mr. Crane is never coming back alive," Knickerbocker said.

  The Storm

  "A dark storm will conceal all the dark acts below."

  "If you are ever on the Canadian side of the border, look us up and you're more than welcome to our hospitality again," Red said as he and his group waved good-bye to them.

  The two men parted with the wagon train not too long after daybreak. The families were heading to towns just north of the Canadian border, but Julian had no idea where the Marshal was taking him.

  These were untamed rocky lands, and it was getting rockier as they rode along. In the distance, to his left flank, Julian could see many dark mountains rising from the earth. The sky was overcast, and the mountains looked almost like giant faces watching their every move. He quickly dismissed the feeling as nothing more than the human mind wanting to make order out of the disorder of nature, like seeing shapes in the clouds, but the more he looked, the more he couldn't shake the fact that the mountains did look like faces. Julian turned his eyes away and noticed something else.

  There was an eerie glow from behind one of the smaller peaks. He had seen bonfires in the distance before, but this was different. The illumination was muted. It had to be bright enough to be seen from this distance and from behind the mountain, but the light wasn't bright.

  "What do you think that glowing is from over there?" he asked the Marshal.

  The man glanced at it and stared for a while.

  "Who knows? Maybe someone's campfire."

  "But the light is strange. I've never seen a fire give off light like that."

  "You have Sleepy Hollow scary stories on the brain. It's just a campfire, and it's out of our way so don't ask to investigate it."

  Julian thought to himself that perhaps he did pay too much attention to the wagon party's ghost stories last night. But the glow was real, and it was right out of a ghost story. Man hadn't made his mark on these lands and probably never would. It was the kind of land that even the Indians avoided, instead passing down stories to the generations not to trespass. Evil spirits lived here.

  "How long will it take to reach there?" Julian asked.

  The Marshal seemed to be ignoring him as they rode along. Julian looked ahead and saw it too. The sky was beginning to darken about twenty miles or so ahead.

  "What did you ask me?"

  "How long will it take to reach there?"

  "Well if you had asked me five minutes ago, I would have said one thing, but now I don't know. That looks to be a real bad storm forming up ahead."

  Julian looked all around the sky. "Strange how it came up out of nowhere."

  "Not strange. Ever seen a tornado? It comes out of nowhere sometimes."

  "But that isn't a tornado. It's a storm. A big one, too. Maybe we can outrun it or get out of its path."

  "I don't think we can."

  "It won't hurt to try."

  "Follow me."

  Julian kept watching the sky as it transformed from clear to ever-darkening shades of blue. It had the appearance of the entire region being underwater. Then he imagined that the darkening storm clouds were actually a barrier filling up with water draining down from the stars, and at any moment that threshold of clouds would break in a torrent of water and wash them and everything else away.

  The Marshal rode on a northeasterly direction and Julian followed. The growing storm hung in the sky as its dark clouds multiplied. It seemed to wait to see where they were heading and then started to move forward again.

  "If I didn't know better, I'd say that storm was following after us!"

  "Well you do know better!" Marshal yelled back.

  They were riding faster across the rocky terrain. It was not even noon and the sky looked more like the hours before sunset and looking into the coming storm it looked as dark as night. Julian looked directly above his head and suddenly felt his entire body levitating into sky.

  "No!" he yelled out realizing he had been thrown.

  Caleb Williams' body arched and his head hung as he landed back down to the ground. Julian crashed to the ground hard.

  The Marshal was riding between two hills and glanced back. He stopped his horse. Julian was gone! He pulled his gun as a look of anger swept across his face. The young Crane probably thought he could get away under the cover of the storm without anyone being able to trace his tracks. Marshal grinned. No one knew this area better than he. The Marshal turned his horse around and rode back hard.

  Julian picked himself up and was thankful he landed on dirt rather than rocks. He slowly walked to his horse with his hands open. "Whoa, Caleb Williams. Stay calm." He grabbed the reins.

  What startled my horse?

  His horse had been startled before but had never thrown him from his back.

  Something smacked the lower part of right boot. Julian stood still. It was not his imagination as something hit him again. He looked down and saw both of his feet were standing on a slithering shape.

  Julian jumped back and Caleb Williams almost leapt up again. Julian drew on the black snake as it crawled not away, but towards them! As he aimed at the reptile, his eyes could see a new shape coming at him from the corner of his eye. The shot hit the snake point-blank and Julian aimed his gun at the shape that was taking form, though his gun was empty.

  Marshal stood in front of him.

  "That wasn't the smartest thing I ever saw a lawman do. I could have shot you," Julian scolded.

  "If I knew you had a gun in your hand, I wouldn't have done what I did, obviously," the Marshal said. "I didn't know what happened to you. You disappeared."

  Julian returned his gun to his holster. "A snake startled my horse and threw me."

  "This snake." The Marshal picked something up from the ground with the tip of his boot.

  Julian leaned closer and saw that the snake was much larger than he thought.

  "Can't say I ever saw a rattlesnake like this one before," Marshal said. "I hate to imagine what would have happened if it bit your horse or you."

  Julian looked up at the sky. "Let's move and hope we don't see any others."

  Marshal looked up the sky too. "We may have to find shelter sooner rather than later."

  Julian sighed. "There's not much here. The sky is turning black so fast. I've never seen a storm move in this quick."

  "We'll have to ride faster."

  Julian pulled his horse along to follow Marshal, but now he felt nervous about the terrain at their feet. Every tiny shadow brought on anxiety in him.

  The Marshal mounted his horse with one hand and secretly placed his gun back in his holster. Julian also got back on his horse and then quickly, and blindly, reloaded his gun.

  The men rode their horses as quickly as the horses could take along the uneven, jagged terrain. The trees and brush became scarcer. The dirt turned sandy as they rode. The first bolt of lightning flashed in the distance. There was a rolling rumble and three seconds later, the thunder exploded, spooking the horses.

  Marshal quickened the pace as they raced the horses. Another sound of thunder, then another exploded. The dark clouds had already overtaken them, and then the rain started to pour. It was coming down so hard that they knew they'd soon have to dismount again. There were several large trees in easy distance, but taking refuge under one of them could be a death trap. Lightning liked striking tall things in the middle of emptiness.

  As they had thought, lightning struck a tree in the distance and shattered it in half, causing the entire thing to catch on fire.

  The men were now fighting their horses to push on. The frequent lightning and louder and lo
uder thunder was panicking the animals. Marshal raised his hand, stopped his horse, and jumped down. Julian did the same. At any moment, the horses would throw them.

  Marshal led his horse by the reins and calmly walked forward, with a following Julian. The rain was fierce, the lightning never-ending and thunder deafening. But there seemed no place to take shelter.

  They also faced a new danger. First it was only splashes as their feet hit new puddles along the ground, but now the ground was turning into its own river, and causing the men to almost slip several times. The only saving grace for them was that they were steadily moving up to higher ground, and the terrain was rocky enough to allow the water to flow downward and into crevasses away from them. However, with this downpour, gravity wouldn't be able to rescue them or their horses from the floodwaters, especially as the rain intensified all around them. They weren't at the top yet so it was also possible that all of them could be washed down the mountainous land at any time. There was no indication that this storm would let up soon, just the opposite.

  One of the lightning strikes illuminated the entire area with such a brightness that both Julian and his horse jumped. He noticed a large stone in the floodwater around them.

  Maybe I can pick it up, sneak up behind the Marshal, and bash his skull in. Julian dismissed the thought for the moment. Good people don't behave that way.

  Marshal suddenly began in a different direction. At this point, Julian couldn't see anything other than the Marshal's back with the lack of natural light and the blinding rain. The Marshal then seemed to disappear into pitch-black and then the rain stopped.

  "I'll try to start a fire," Marshal called out. They were in a cave. "Not that I have any chance whatsoever of succeeding. At least we're out of the rain and lightning."

  Julian was about to squeeze the excess water out of his clothes but thought to himself, why bother? He was drenched and in a moment, he was going to be drenched and freezing. He ran his hand over Caleb William's forehead and then patted him a few times.

  "Marshal, we're never going to be able to make a fire in this dampness—"

  A fire lit up, and the image of the Marshal was before him. He held in his hand what seemed to be a torch.