Sleepy Hollow: Bridge of Bones

by Richard Gleaves

  He looked around the library annex, wistfully searching for the exits. He noticed Zef peeking out from between General Reference and Periodicals. Zef had come to see Joey sing but was hiding himself—as if to appear at a concert was a shameful thing. The guy was messed up. As the concert ended, Zef didn’t stay to applaud. He crept out, unseen. Jason decided not to tell Joey that Zef had come. Joey could do a lot better.

  “Hey Jase! Did you like it?” His friend bounded over, eyes bright, flapping the wings of his choir robe.

  “Sheer perfection.”

  “I hate our altos. Don’t go anywhere. Let me get changed and I’ll meet you by the elf.”

  “The what?”

  “The elf! In the History section.” Joey disappeared.

  Jason found the elf, a spindly striped-stocking thing that looked like a cross between Mr. Spock and the Wicked Witch of the East. It carried a sign that read “Happy Holly Days.”

  Thump.

  Jason turned. Joey had dropped a book on the polished wood of a table.

  “What’s that?”

  “I had time to kill while they set up our risers.” Joey grinned. “Page two hundred twenty.”

  Jason sat and opened the book, an old leather-bound volume entitled “Chronicles of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow” by Edgar Mayhew Bacon. On page two hundred twenty he read:

  The Hero of Gory Brook

  Though tales abound throughout the Tarrytown region, in the History of our American Revolution only two events enacted upon the local stage were of any particular note. Of those two, the capture of the spy André was the most important, as we discussed above. If not for those fortunate events, the traitor General Benedict Arnold might have undone the entire War.

  The second event was an incident which occurred in the hills above North Tarrytown, in the vicinity of a stream now called the Gory Brook. On Halloween night, 1776, a group of American patriots were ambushed by Hessian troops who had been dispatched by British General Howe. It is said that these troops were determined to block passage by General Washington to the port at Beekman Landing and thereby cut off Washington’s escape to New Jersey.

  The marauders’ mission was foiled. Despite the Hessians’ devilish ambush and overwhelming numbers, the patriots were able to hold the passage through the Pocantico Hills thanks to the bravery of one William Crane, a soldier of the Continental Army who, it is said, single-handedly slew so many of his attackers that the brook ran red with gore, hence its name.

  We may owe the very existence of our nation to this battle and its hero. If Washington had been prevented from escaping, Howe and his Redcoats would certainly have brought the war to a premature and unhappy end.

  Jason sat back and grinned.

  “So?” said Joey. “What do you think?”

  “So if it weren’t for my ancestor we wouldn’t have a country? What do you think I think?”

  “So I did good?”

  “Better than good.” Jason wondered if Eliza knew this. She must not have. If she’d known that the Cranes had such an illustrious ancestor, she’d have crowed it to every passer-by.

  “Does it answer anything?”

  “I don’t know. Let me think.”

  They walked outside and unchained their bikes. Dusk was gathering and Christmas lights sparkled in the trees of Patriots Park. They rolled their bikes past a statue on a pedestal.

  “So where’s William’s statue?” said Jason.

  “I’ve never heard of him,” said Joey. “And I’m a local.”

  “I think I know why,” said Jason. “The Horseman got William. The Horseman went after him like he went after Ichabod and Absalom. And me. I’m dreaming as my ancestor. I saw the whole thing. We were riding in the woods. The Hessians ambushed us. The Horseman was there with his hatchet. The Horseman killed me—William—at the bridge.”

  “The Horseman is a Hessian trooper,” said Joey, nodding. “It makes sense. Or, maybe the Horseman is showing you how he killed your ancestor. You know. To scare you.”

  “It’s working. And that would explain the ‘die at the bridge’ threat.”

  They rolled their bikes between two displays of Christmas firs, enjoying the scent.

  Jason shifted his backpack. “So William saved the day but was hacked down at the bridge… wasn’t he?” Jason tried to remember the date on William’s grave rubbing but couldn’t. “Maybe my ancestor is sending the dream, like Kate said. William was the first Crane killed by the Horseman. He wants me to know that.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. So I’ll avenge him. You have a better answer?”

  “No… but I do have this.” Joey brought a wrapped package out of his backpack. “I’m going to Grandma’s tomorrow so… It’s not much.”

  Jason took a package from his own backpack and handed it to Joey. “Neither’s mine. Hadewych’s got me on an allowance.”

  They held identically-shaped packages. They looked at each other.

  “No way,” Jason said.

  They both ripped off the wrappings and broke into hysterical laughter. They’d given each other the same book:

  Psychic Abilities for Dummies

  They laughed until the tree salesman waved them along, muttering something about potheads.

  Jason put the book in his backpack. “So. Do you have—”

  “No. I don’t have a superpower yet. Quit asking.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Really. Quit asking. I feel like you’ve gone through puberty and I’m still a boy soprano. But I know what Gift I want now. I want a dancer’s gift.” He threw one arm into the air, skipping. “What’s a dancer’s Gift?”

  “Incredibly light loafers?”

  “Shut up.”

  They walked their bikes across grass still wet from an afternoon rain.

  “Any more poltergeist activity?” said Jason.

  “Nope. I think it’s over. Thanks to this.” He touched the talisman hanging around his neck. “Thank Valerie for me.”

  “I will. I’m having dinner with her on Christmas Eve. I’m trying to think of a way of asking her about my Gift.”

  Joey’s voice became odd. “Hey, uh, will Kate have a superpower now?”

  “What?”

  “She survived a Horseman attack. At the stables. Won’t she have a Gift now?”

  “Lower your voice. When do you leave for Seattle anyway?”

  “Don’t change the subject. I asked a question. Will Kate have a superpower or not? Or do people always have to go through the coma stage first?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then why don’t you ask… your mysterious friend?”

  “Okay, I might do that,” Jason said, tensing.

  Joey stopped walking. “I know it’s her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t look all innocent. Kate’s your mysterious friend, right? The one who tells you all this stuff?”

  “You know I can’t talk about that.”

  “I know it’s her. She saw you heal the horse and if she didn’t have a Gift she’d be a ghost target now like I was. And you don’t seem to be worried about that, so case closed.”

  “Thank you, Nancy Drew.”

  “What’s her Gift? Can she talk to horses? Cast love spells on hapless straight boys?”

  “Drop it.”

  “Yeah. It’s her. It’s all over your face.”

  “Sure.” Jason stomped his pedals, climbing into his seat. His back wheel shot mud up and high, directly into Joey’s eyes. They blinked at each other. Jason took off, giggling. “All over whose face?”

  “You’re dead, Crane!” Joey shouted after, climbing onto his own bike. “Dead!”

  Jason sped like the gingerbread man—through the high school parking lot, down the trail and up Gory Brook—the exact route once galloped by a terrified Ichabod. A menacing figure rode behind, its head blotted away from the neck up.

  “Oh!” Joey shouted. “I would kill for a pumpkin!”

>   CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “The Cauldron”

  Jason pushed back from the table. He ran a hand over his stomach, half-seriously checking for hernias, rolling his eyes. He’d pushed the limits of his eating capacity. Valerie had served turkey, three-lobed rolls dripping butter, stuffing made of cornbread and giblets and mushrooms and sage, gravy-capped mountains of whipped potatoes, cinnamon and apple tucked into a coverlet of crust, chocolate shavings and whipped cream and toffee chips, white wine and peppermint tea. An ice cream machine whirred in the next room.

  His hostess had still more to offer. She led Jason to an immense wing-backed chair in her music room. She put a cup of cappuccino into his right hand and a plate of gingerbread men into his left. She sat at the grand piano and began to play.

  Jason had never studied music but he recognized the composer. Rachmaninoff. His mother had listened to Rachmaninoff, sometimes. Jason had inherited her love of classical composers. His father preferred rock music—so did Jason, most days—but Dianne Crane liked classical and she always got her way on long trips. One autumn, the trio had driven out to Acadia National Park with the radio on and the windows rolled down. They had littered Highway 9 with scraps of Mozart. He stood with his parents at the top of Cadillac Mountain, gazing at the impossibly tiny landscape below, the coves and sounds cutting through a sea of red and orange, the rocky shoreline, the town of Bar Harbor a smudge of white swallowed by the shadow of a cloud. Had this been the music on the stereo that day? No. Not this piece. This piece was softer, more lyrical. On the mountain, his mother had opened the doors of the car and had played a real concerto: a Rachmaninoff concerto of crashing chords and ecstatic violins. As Valerie played, Jason saw his mother—wind-whipped—standing against the horizon. A slim blonde woman in a white blouse, her shoulders thrown back, as if rising from the sea. Next to her stood his father, a handsome but lanky man with just enough muscle that the wind couldn’t steal him away. Andrew Crane’s gloved left hand slipped around his wife's waist. He beckoned to his son. Come. Come join your parents at the edge of the world.

  Some small clash of notes in the music spoke for the emotion inside him. He had no name for what he felt. Sad pleasure. Painful happiness. Valerie had turned to face him. The music had stopped. She smiled, seeing his expression. She closed the valve at the front of her throat.

  “Thank you,” she buzzed.

  “For what?”

  She patted his knee, flexed her fingers.

  “Hearing me.”

  Her face went still for a moment but her laugh lines reappeared instantly. She stood and left the room. Jason knew what she meant. Valerie’s speech was a painful thing to listen to—but this music had been her other voice, her true voice—the gentle, feminine song of her soul. He’d learned something new about his friend.

  He bit into a gingerbread man. It came back headless.

  She called to him from the parlor. He joined her. She had lit the fireplace. The flames made her look beautiful. They gave her color but also deepened the fine lines of her mouth and cheeks. A beauty that had seen its share of pain.

  “Close the door, please,” she said.

  Jason obeyed, though the parlor felt muggy and humid. Valerie stirred a little cauldron. It bubbled and steamed over the fire. The air smelled herbal, filled with some medicinal vapor not unlike incense.

  “You don’t mind?” Valerie said. “I need the humidity.” She bent over and inhaled through her valve.

  “I’m fine,” said Jason, but loosened a collar button.

  He remembered this room. The first time he’d seen it, it had been strung with grave-rubbings. Hadewych had stood there, at that slate fireplace, less than two months ago, making his proposal. He had made opening the Van Brunt tomb sound like a grand adventure.

  I should have run away. I should have refused to sign for the exhumation. I should have refused when he produced that forged ID. And Eliza would still be alive.

  “By the way,” Valerie said. “The upstairs apartment—is vacant.”

  “Hadewych’s old apartment?”

  “You’re welcome to move in.”

  “I’d love to. But you know what would happen. He’s my guardian. He’d have the police drag me back to Gory Brook.”

  “I know. I thought I would ask. Before I search for—a new renter. I can’t leave it sitting empty.”

  “I appreciate the thought. I really do. But I think I can get more accomplished… behind enemy lines.”

  She nodded. “Any progress?” She sat on the hearth, warming one hand at a time, keeping the other free for speaking.

  “Yes.” He paced, swallowing the rest of his gingerbread man. “The Treasure’s not downstairs or in the attic. I’ve searched everywhere. Next time he and Zef are out, I think I have a way into his room. But he’d expect me to look. He wouldn’t keep it in the house. And he wouldn’t want Zef to find it either.”

  “Are there any—hiding places—in the house?”

  “I don’t know. That’s bothered me since I first moved in. The spaces are weird. The walls don’t line up or something.”

  “A secret room?”

  Jason shrugged.

  Valerie inhaled the cauldron fumes. “Hadewych’s family—built that house—”

  “So if there’s a passage or something he’d know.”

  “He would. He’s been obsessed—with that place—ever since I met him.”

  “How did you meet him anyway?”

  “He saved my life—ten years ago.” Her index finger tapped her tracheostomy valve. “The night this happened. Don’t ask me—to tell the story.”

  “I won’t.” Jason didn’t need her to tell it. He’d seen it. Valerie’s mother—possessed, blank-faced—stabbing her daughter in the throat with a car key, over and over—spilling the girl’s blood into the Pocantico River. So Hadewych had been there that night?

  “Hadewych got me to the hospital. I thought he was—my hero. I was blind. And stupid.” She wiped a tear away. “Forgive me, Jason?”

  He nodded, but he hadn’t forgiven her. He still blamed her, on some level, for everything that had happened. He couldn’t fully trust her, even now. He hadn’t told her about Eliza’s ghostly visits, or the Pyncheon Legacy. Valerie didn’t seem to be hurting for money but a hundred and twelve million dollars would be a temptation for anyone. He’d told his lawyer (who Valerie had hired) only because he’d had to. The lawyer had sworn to keep it confidential. He felt grateful for Valerie’s help and her friendship. But he couldn’t trust her. Not yet.

  The paper clip….

  Had she really been spinning it with her mind? If he could find another Gifted person… He had so many questions…

  “I want to do a reading,” Valerie said. “Now. Before we discuss anything else.” She took a deck of tarot cards from the mantelpiece and drew one from the deck with her eyes closed.

  She handed it to Jason. “This is the past.”

  Jason raised the card: THE FOOL. She glanced at him, embarrassed.

  “And who’s a fool?” he said.

  “That is your significator.”

  “Great.”

  “I’ve done many readings—on your behalf. It always appears. The fool is blinded by visions—and doesn’t see the dangerous canyon—at his feet.”

  Jason became very still.

  “What is it?” asked Valerie.

  “Nothing. That’s… an image that’s come up a lot. I had a dream of Eliza recently. A memory. We were driving along the edge of the Million Dollar Highway in Colorado and I was scared to fall. And… when we drove down from Maine, in September, I kept worrying about the cliff roads. Going over.”

  “Does it have a special meaning to you?”

  Jason nodded. “It’s… a childhood fear. My parents’ car went over the side of a dam and they drowned. I used to think that’s how I would go too.” He peered at the card in the firelight. A white dog barked at the Fool’s heels. He touched the image. “Is that Charley?”
/>   She nodded. “The dog barks—to warn the fool of danger. Let’s move on.” She took another card from the deck. “This is the present.”

  Jason inhaled sharply as she laid it down. The card bore an image of a man dangling upside-down from a tree or pole, one leg tucked behind the other, as if doing some inverted Irish step-dancing. The caption read THE HANGED MAN.

  “Does it look familiar?”

  “Yes. It’s just like the body in the woods.” The figure even had yellow shoes.

  “It symbolizes surrender. Giving in to the inevitable. I think the body in the woods—the way it was strung up—was a message.”

  “A message to me?”

  She nodded. “To tell you—to surrender. Maybe that’s what the Nightmare is for, too. To scare you.”

  “To show me how my ancestor died?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Jason blinked. The herbal vapor stung his eyes.

  She placed a hand on his. “We don’t need to—turn any more cards.”

  “No. Do it,” Jason said. “Show me the future.”

  She closed her eyes, found a card, and laid it down.

  It bore the Roman numeral five and an image of a man in a black cloak, standing by a stream. The cloak almost covered the figure’s head. Jason thought of the Horseman immediately. At the figure’s feet lay three overturned gold chalices. The figure stared at these, ignoring two upright chalices behind him.

  “Interesting,” said Valerie.

  “Why?”

  “The Five of Cups. I don’t understand it.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s mourning the—fallen cups. It is a card of great regret. Blind regret.”

  Jason looked at the card more closely. A building stood on a hill in the background. “What’s that?”

  “His home. It’s on the far side—of the water. See? Over the—”