by Gaby Triana
“Bram, I need your help.”
“Okay. But can it wait? I’ll be done in an hour.” He slides a boot into one of the horse’s stirrups, grabs the horn to hoist himself up, and takes his shiny metal sword and glowing fake jack-o-lantern from Russ.
“No, you don’t understand. I need you to come with me somewhere. I need you right now.”
“I like the way that sounds, Mica, but I can’t. Less than an hour. Watch the show, and then we’ll go?”
I’m not sure why I feel so panicky, except for the fact that Mary keeps asking me to hurry, and I can’t dig by myself. I’m a weakling, and as much as I hate to admit it, I need Bram’s brute strength to help me.
“Horseman, you’re on.” The woman from the staging area gate appears from around the corner, giving me a dirty look. “You, I said you can’t be here. Bram, get her out of here.”
“Princess, I’ll see you out there, okay? Tell me later how I did?”
Tears linger at the corners of my eyes, but I nod. Of course. It’s ridiculous, not to mention selfish, to lure him away from his most important night of the year. I watch as Headless Bram takes the horse’s reins and saddle horn in one hand then places the sword in its scabbard at his waist with the other. He holds up a hand. “Actually, wait there,” he says, handing the pumpkin back to Russ.
The gate lady heads back to her post with her walkie-talkie as Bram practices a few laps around the yard. I can’t stand here and watch him practice. I have to go, even if I need to find the lavender bush alone.
Sunnyside.
Yes, the lavender bush is at Sunnyside. That’s where Mary was standing the day we visited. Whatever is buried there, Irving must have done it after coming home to America and settling at the house.
Bram’s horse gallops all around the yard then suddenly comes up behind me, and my brain, remembering the same trotting echo in the cemetery the day Coco was killed, flies into a pounding fit. Is he coming up on me? I turn, horrified.
“What are you doing?” I yell. All I can do is stand and gape at him charging toward me as he leans to one side with his arm outstretched. A second later, he hooks it around my waist and sweeps me off my feet, pulling me onto the space in front of him.
His practiced, maniacal laugh echoes inside his costume. He pulls back on the reins and turns the horse around. “That so could not have worked out the way it did.”
It’s a little hard to answer him with my stomach lodged in my windpipe. A miracle I’m conscious at all. His horse trots over to Russ who offers up the flaming pumpkin to me with a smile. “This’ll be a nice twist from every year.”
“Thank you, sir.” Bram trots off to the staging area where volunteers are already gathering in droves to take photos of us as we approach. “Don’t worry, I got you, Mica. Just hold the pumpkin and look like you’re my Katrina Van Tassel.”
“I will be throwing this thing at someone, right? Please tell me I am.”
He laughs so hard, I think he’s going to lose his grip on me. “Man…”
“What?”
“You really can’t take Sleepy Hollow out of the girl.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“The lady of his heart was his partner in the dance, and smiling graciously in reply to all his
amorous oglings.”
The show begins as a slow waltz, our horse prancing in circles, us posing for photos and waiting for our time to come. The speakers throughout the manor grounds pump standard spooky sounds, but once Bram and I hear the fanfare that cues the start of the show, he kicks his heels, and the volunteers break apart to let us through.
When we begin charging, Bram is no longer Bram. He morphs into his part—my captor and protector, my reason to fear and to love, all at once. I play the damsel in distress, his arms pinning me tightly, and I hold on for dear life. I cradle the pumpkin, scared to drop it, as the steed bursts through the gate to the roar of cheers. Bolting toward our track, we stay along the perimeter of the manor grounds, and every twenty feet, security guards stand ready to intercept anyone who tries to get in the horse’s way.
Immediately, the event attendees clap and take pics, flashes going off like twinkling stars. It’s a beautiful dream, the kind I wish I had more often, an exhilarating trance that suddenly makes me forget my problems. I feel alive. I’ve been dormant for way too long, believing lies, living a half existence.
Sleepy Hollow has awakened my core, and I will never be the same again.
I should be uncomfortable sitting side-saddle with little room for my body, rising and bouncing hard onto a leather seat, but I’m not. Bram keeps me in place snugly. He unsheathes his sword from its scabbard with his other hand, and it sings a high-pitched note that highlights the dark musical score blaring in the background. Crazy horseman laughter echoes on the speakers, and the flashes dazzle the landscape.
Bram wields his sword in circles high above his head, and if I didn’t know better, I might have felt genuinely afraid of this madman rocketing through the woods. I externalize this fear by acting the part of a pained and suffering damsel. We ride several laps, disappearing into a thicket of trees to turn around and then bolt out again. Each time, more and more people gather to watch, and for one brief moment, I see the demon-masked man.
“Hold on tight!” Bram says inside his costume. A moment later, the giant black horse rears up on its hind legs. Holy crap… I curl up against Bram’s chest to keep from sliding off. “Oh my God…don’t drop me, please!” I shut my eyes and try not to look at the HollowEve landscape standing up on its side. How ridiculous would it be for me to tumble off this horse and be the laughingstock of the town again? But I’m lying if I don’t admit this is, all things considered, the most fun I’ve had in my life.
The horse snorts through its nostrils and lips. It lands back on its feet, and Bram says, “Okay, now you see that guy coming this way? The one on the horse?”
Cutting through the crowd from the opposite direction is the Ichabod Crane look-alike who made me do a double-take earlier. He’s wearing knickers, a shirt, coattails, and a tri-cornered hat with a long braid, and he’s atop a gray horse, looking at us very worried. “I see him.”
“Okay, we’re gonna chase him one time around. When he comes back to the middle here, he’s gonna pause and wait while we rear up again. Then you throw the pumpkin at him. Got it?”
“Got it.” I love this interpretation, how the Headless Horseman has stolen Ichabod Crane’s crush straight from under his nose. Or as in the original story, is the horseman really Brom Bones in disguise, leading the fair Katrina to the altar? Either way, I’m a part of it. I didn’t expect to be, but here I am.
“Here we go!” Bram kicks the horse, and we’re off, hooves pummeling the ground at a medium clip, Bram baring his sword again, slicing and swinging at the air. We follow poor Ichabod Crane all around the grounds, and I have to say that whoever is playing the part of the lanky schoolmaster is pretty spot on and super funny. Finally, after a few minutes, we make our way around the last bend, cut straight into the middle of the field, and wait as several staff members keep the crowd at a safe distance.
The horse rears, and that’s my cue. I lift the pumpkin, heavy in my hands. Can I even throw straight? Please let me do this right… For a moment, I wish Bram wouldn’t have pulled me into this without as much as one rehearsal, but it’s too late now. I raise the pumpkin higher into the air. Cameras flash all around us. I can do this.
“Do it!” he says. I do as he says. Then, with all the strength I can muster, I pull back my arm as far as it’ll go, as even Ichabod Crane nods at me in encouragement, and using my body for support, I heave it at him as hard as I can.
The pumpkin head goes whizzing through the air to more camera flashes, applause, and cries from the crowd. Then Ichabod, raising his arms up to avoid getting hit, cleverly positions himself to look like the flaming missile is really striking his head. He pretends to fall off his horse and tumbles to the ground. The crowd cheers.
/> The Headless Horseman’s laughter echoes again from the speakers, and that’s Bram’s cue to turn the horse back to the staging area off-grounds. Only he doesn’t head back to the staging area. He pivots and disappears into the south woods, the cheers and noise level from the festival melting away behind us. Once we’re a safe distance from the festivities, between two streets outside of Patriots Park, Bram slows down long enough to unbutton the top part of his costume.
“Mica, that was wicked.” He smiles. “Incredible.”
I turn my face up to him. “Why did you do that? Take me with you?”
“What kind of headless gentleman would I be had I just left you there?”
“The kind that had a job to do? I would’ve under-stood.”
“That’s not how it works. You showed up for me tonight. Now I’m all yours.” He bends to kiss the top of my head. “Besides, it was dramatic as hell, wasn’t it? Now tell me where we’re going.”
Remembering my purpose, I point toward Sunnyside. “That way.”
“Sunnyside?” Bram sounds disappointed.
“Yes, to dig.”
“To dig,” he repeats. “And what, pray tell, are we digging for? Treasure? Dead bodies?”
I shrug, readjusting myself so that I’m straddling the horse same as Bram, my dress cascading on either side of me. “Maybe both.” He pauses to think. I can feel his mind going a mile a minute. “Just take us to Sunnyside, will you please? I have to get this over with, or I might never sleep again.”
Soon, silence, except for the sound of the horse’s clop, envelops us.
Bram’s arm wraps around my waist. He holds me closely, and not because he’s keeping me from falling off his horse. I feel his warm breath on my neck in the cold night, and it makes my skin prickle. “Well, we can’t have you losing any more sleep, can we? So if my Mica wishes to dig at Sunnyside, then digging at Sunnyside we shall do.”
I begin thinking about the logistics of the plan we’re about to execute. Where do we even begin digging exactly? Where do we find a shovel? Do I really want to see a tiny set of bones? Or maybe, Irving and Shelley’s second child had been older when Irving brought him home. Maybe he didn’t die as a child at all, but as a fully grown man (or woman!).
I ask Bram to move the horse a little faster and punch it down the road. Once we turn into the familiar driveway, more darkness settles on us as we traverse underneath the canopy of trees that seems so peaceful during the day. At night, however, the whole path takes on an ominous tone that makes me want to turn back around.
Crickets and frog noises surround us, fighting for attention with the horse’s footsteps and the sound of our own breathing. Once, Bram stops to fix his costume.
“What are you doing?”
“The guard is less likely to ask questions if he sees I’m decapitated, don’t you think?”
I lean my head back against his chest. “True.”
But there are no guards tonight. Maybe they’re all at HollowEve in case things get out of hand. Bram leaps his horse over a low gate then leads him down the curving path around the gift shop. Owls welcome us with soft hooting, and the grounds take on a holy splendor I’ve never before experienced.
Listening to the hooves crunch over gravel, I close my eyes and try to visualize the exact spot we need to start digging. Lavender bush. Start of the foot trail. As soon as we’re near the little cottage in the English garden north of the main house, my heart skips a beat. I stare at the house. That’s it—the little house from my dream. How come I saw this house every day for the better part of my life, yet I wasn’t able to recognize it?
I swing my leg over the horse and slide onto the ground while Bram tethers him to a wooden fence. I help him remove the wire-framed jacket off his costume.
“Mica, maybe this sounds like a crazy question, and I’m all for going along with your loco scheme, but, uh…what the hell are we doing here?”
“I told you, we’re going to dig.”
“For?”
“Bram”—I sigh—“something’s buried here. I dreamed it. My mother dreamed it. Whatever it is, it’s the other thing that Irving took from London with him. He spoke of two things he called a double creation. I think it’s code for two people. One is his son, Cristóbal—”
“You know about Cristóbal?” he interrupts, and I’m totally not shocked that he knows, too. I was probably the last one here to find out.
“Yes, so you can stop pretending you don’t know. Seems like everybody did but me. My mom wanted me to know about my heritage before I left, but I think she wanted to be sure of it first. And in finding all the proof she needed, things went wrong. Bram, my mom didn’t fall in the tub. She was murdered.”
Bram gapes at me, a glint of mistrust in his eyes. “What makes you say that?”
“I had a feeling from the day Nina told me she died. Something wasn’t right. Plus, she showed me in a dream. I don’t know who it was, but if you know, please come clean.”
“I swear, I don’t. I mean, a lot of people didn’t like her, but enough to kill her? You’re talking someone with a serious axe to grind.”
“Or someone who’d do anything for the journal.”
“Or someone who needs the money, or just plain crazy. You think she stole it?”
“I know she did,” I say, as painful as that is to admit. “Bram…” I have to tell him. He’s my best friend. I have to trust, give the benefit of the doubt. “I know, because I found it. Not only did I find it, I have more—papers that’ll set me free from all this, documents to stop people from questioning once and for all.”
“You what?”
“I found it.”
“You found the journal?”
I nod.
Bram takes off his riding gloves and sets them on top of his jacket on the wooden fence, breathing out a huge sigh. “Wow.”
“Are you upset? I know everyone thinks it belongs to Historic Hudson, but—”
“If that thing belongs to you like your mom said it did, hey—more power to you. I don’t give a shit. I know where I stand.” He looks around. “Which currently is in this stupid garden while HollowEve is going on, but whatever, no beef. I’m here for you. Let’s get this done.”
I take his hand and lead him to the garden house. “I dreamed of an old black shovel. If we find one that looks like it, then I’m officially psychic.” I turn the doorknob to the cottage. Locked. “We’re going to have to break the door in.”
Bram stands on his toes and reaches up, plucking a little gold key resting on the doorframe. “Or not.” He unlocks the house.
There’s not much to steal—two old lawn mowers, gardening tools, watering cans, rope coiled on the wall, and a multitude of other things I can’t see well in the dark. Bram moves past me into the center of the room. He reaches up again, and in seconds, light from a single bulb burns my night vision.
“Light,” he sings.
I shield my eyes.
“And you’re psychic, because here’s a black shovel. You do lottery numbers, too?”
I take one look at the garden tool hanging off the wall. Old, black? Gray maybe. Rusted, definitely. I stare at it a long time. Not sure I can go through with this. It’s one thing to dream about it. It’s another to do it for real. “Whatever happens here tonight, promise me one thing.”
“I’ll still respect you.”
“Stop, I’m serious.”
He laughs quietly. “Tell me.”
“Promise me you’ll never talk about this to anyone, ever. Not your mom, not Janice, not Jonathan, not anybody. I don’t care about me, I really don’t. But my mom’s memory doesn’t need any more bad press than it already has. I happen to think she was pretty freakin’ brilliant, and that should be enough, you know? No need to try and convince others.”
Bram comes up to me then, holds my face in his hands, and lowers his for a soft, sweet kiss. It feels nice to reconnect with him. I know the last two weeks have been stressful for us both, but now that t
he dust is clearing, I see who’s still here for me. “You have my word,” he whispers, taking the shovel from me, walking out of the shed.
I realize how much I love him. How much I always have. And how if anyone can make me consider staying in Sleepy Hollow after this is all over, it’s him. And I would be just fine with that.
Following Bram out of the shed, I close my eyes to drown out external stimuli. Concentrate, Mica, I tell myself. Roses, jasmine, and something else I can’t quite place, fill my senses. Visualizing the exact lavender bush in my dreams, I move to the spot where my heart tells me it should be and open my eyes. Under a starry night, just like I imagined it, a jasmine tree sways in the breeze. “Here.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” Bram rolls up his sleeves and slams a boot firmly on the ground. With a heavy breath, he swings the shovel high over his head. He could be a gravedigger from an old monster movie, the way his shape falls dark against the dim light from the cottage, arms and shovel against the sky. He brings the shovel down with force, just barely cutting into the hard earth. He takes one irritated look at me.
I smile sheepishly, shrugging. “You want me to go see if there’s another shovel in the shed? I can help.”
Shaking his head, he starts again. “I got this.”
And again.
And again.
And again.
Until the earth slowly begins to come loose, the lavender bush wilts beside a growing pile of dirt, and I have plenty of moments over the next few hours to wonder if ever, in the history of best friends, has there ever lived one so dedicated, crazy, and sweat-drenched exhausted as Bram Derant.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“If I can but reach that bridge…I am safe.”
Sitting on the grass, ripping purple lavender petals apart, keeping a wary eye on the horizon for any interlopers—besides us, that is—and listening to Bram’s labored breath, I finally hear the sound I was starting to think I’d never hear. Except it’s not wooden or hollow, like I thought an old coffin might sound. It’s more like—clink.