The Secret of Sleepy Hollow

by Andi Marquette

  Abby gave it to her and Katie entered it. “Texting you now.” She finished and looked up, her gaze locking onto Abby’s, whose phone chimed in the pocket of her fleece with Katie’s text. “Thanks for a great ghost hunt,” Katie said. “If I don’t see you tomorrow, I’ll definitely see you Saturday.”

  “What time?”

  “Festivities really get going around seven. We can go to the glen earlier if you want, but seven usually works. Or we can go downtown at six and get something to eat. There’re usually all kinds of vendors.”

  “That’ll work.”

  “See you then. Right here.” She motioned at the front of the bed and breakfast.

  “Okay. Thanks for the ride and the company.” Abby unbuckled her seat belt and got out because she knew if she hesitated, she’d do something she wasn’t sure about. As good as she imagined it would feel kissing Katie, it was probably a bad idea. She grabbed her bag off the floor of the SUV and closed the door. Katie waited until she had unlocked the main door of the bed and breakfast and then she pulled away, and Abby leaned against the wall just inside for a few moments, wondering what exactly it was about Katie that had her all out of sorts. She took that thought to bed.

  LORE

  Dark. As dark as the inside of a cave. Somewhere she heard a beating heart. Was it hers? She strained, listening. Not her heart. Something else. Getting closer. A pounding on hard soil. The darkness decreased and her surroundings took shape into a forest whose trees seemed to move closer together, as if preventing her from slipping between them.

  She felt the pounding now, through the soles of her feet on the packed soil beneath them. She couldn’t run, she couldn’t hide. She was frozen, heartbeat matching the approaching hoofbeats. At that speed, she’d be run down. She tried to scream, tried to say something—anything—but her voice was frozen, too.

  A massive black horse emerged from the darkness as if it had pushed through a heavy curtain, its flanks heaving with its exertions, bit clinking in its teeth. Its rider drew it up short, and they paced in front of her, the horse’s eyes seemingly flashing in the gloom, the rider’s tack creaking and jingling. The rider had no head.

  Abby’s bones ached from trying to run. The rider eased the horse forward, toward her, and she couldn’t even collapse. The horse snorted and its huge head came so close that its breath blew her hair back from her face and she smelled something dank, like mildew on ancient rock. The rider wheeled the horse around and drew a sword, which he pointed first at Abby and then he held it high, like a salute, and the horse reared onto its back legs, the rider and his sword a vertical line to the ground. And then the horse turned and galloped back the way it had come, hoofbeats thrumming up through Abby’s shoes until they faded and she was falling—

  She lurched awake, bathed in sweat and breathing like she’d been running. She lay still in bed for a few minutes. It might’ve been a bad idea to go to the glen and get all freaked out, Katie notwithstanding. She glanced at the bedside clock radio. Just past one. Too late to text anyone. Weird, what the brain could manufacture.

  Abby got out of bed and went to the window. Her room overlooked Main Street. To her left was the heart of downtown, a couple of blocks away. The streetlights cast pools of light onto the street and sidewalk, but nothing besides fallen leaves moved in the street or across the lawns of the nearby houses, historic cottages nestled between a few multi-story New England saltbox-style homes. She opened the window and listened for a bit, ignoring the cold. The rustle of dead leaves in the breeze, scraping against cement as they blew across sidewalks. A dog in the distance. No pounding hoofbeats. No headless rider careening down the street on a huge black horse. She closed the window, relieved, and got back into bed.

  Her tablet sat on the nightstand next to the clock and she turned it on. Halfway through the comedy she’d selected to stream, she was sufficiently relaxed to go back to sleep and her last thoughts were of Katie’s smile.

  “Does anybody ever report seeing Katrina van Tassel’s ghost?” Abby asked Lu the next morning over coffee in the historical society break room. She’d had eggs and fruit at the bed and breakfast already, but she could always do with more coffee. And maybe a donut.

  “Yes, actually. Sometimes there’s mention of a woman dressed in what reports call ‘an old-fashioned dress’ in the glen. Other reports have her at the pub, which used to be the Van Tassel family home.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “There’s a portrait of her in the pub, above the bar. Did you see it?”

  “No.” She’d have to work on her powers of observation.

  “Well, it’s based on a painting we have in the vault. Come on.”

  Deciding it was better to focus on Katrina than to let her nightmares distract her, Abby left her coffee on the break room table and followed Lu downstairs.

  “We keep it protected,” Lu said as she unlocked one of the flat metal drawers that looked like it might’ve been used to store maps. “It’s in a climate controlled environment.” She slid the drawer open, and beneath what looked like plexiglass was an oil painting in an ornate wooden frame of a woman from the torso up. She wore a white dress, cut in such a way to show off a bit of her shoulders and neck. She looked straight out at the viewer, an enigmatic little smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Her reddish-blond hair had been swept up and her eyes—hazel, Abby decided—seemed to spark with mischief.

  “Wow. She was beautiful. And the artist was really good.”

  Lu laughed. “Is it any wonder Ichabod may have been interested?” She shut the drawer and locked it, and Abby followed her back upstairs.

  “Do you think that was true?” Abby asked.

  Lu chose another donut from the box. “That Ichabod and Brom Bones vied for Katrina’s attentions?” She asked before taking a bite.

  “Yes.”

  “The legends suggest that. And Katrina’s correspondence with Johanna certainly indicated that she had more than a passing interest in Ichabod. You’ll find more of those references in box six. She also wrote rather disparaging things about Brom.”

  “Yeah, I’ve come across some of those.” Abby poured herself another cup of coffee from the pot on the sink counter. “Katrina thought Ichabod was handsome. And from her description, he doesn’t sound anything like what the popular legends say about him.”

  “That’s not unusual. From Katrina’s correspondence, Ichabod was somewhat of a social rebel. So the legend formed to create the narrative that presented him as an awkward and superstitious man, thus justifying whatever happened to him.”

  Abby nodded. She’d seen that many times in historical records. She liked that Ichabod was sort of a rebel, and that he may have had a romance with Katrina van Tassel. She ate another donut and finished her coffee. Being here helped her dream from the night before fade even more. Ten minutes later she was settled in the reading room with box six.

  By the third file, she was thoroughly engrossed in Katrina’s letters. Some she re-read because she got caught up in Katrina’s stories. It was cool how you could get a sense of someone from the letters they wrote. Katrina had different personas with different people in her circle of friends and family. She was sly, witty, and maybe a little outrageous in her turns of phrase when she wrote to Johanna. But to older relatives or non-family associates, she was formal and, in some cases, demure. Abby liked how Katrina would sometimes slip a little rebelliousness into those letters, though, like when she mentioned local politics that favored women. Katrina would have made an excellent politician, Abby thought as she read. She knew exactly what to say and how to say it, depending on the audience.

  At one point Abby checked the clock and stretched. Two hours had passed and she hadn’t even noticed, she had been so caught up in Katrina’s world and the glimpses of late eighteenth-century America revealed through her flowing script. She was a little over halfway through this box
, but she didn’t mind diving right back in.

  She didn’t hear the door open and when Katie spoke, it made her jump.

  “Hey,” Katie said. “Sorry to bother you.”

  “No, it’s okay.” And it was. It was more than okay.

  “I mean, I didn’t want to tear you away from your work, but we’ve got a couple of pizzas out here. Want some?”

  Abby glanced at the clock. It was nearly one. “Sure.”

  Katie held the door for her and as Abby passed, she wondered why Katie had to look so good in jeans. These were low slung, and she’d accessorized with a wide leather belt. She wore a plain denim shirt tucked into her jeans. No baseball cap today. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail again, and it left her neck exposed and oh, how Abby wanted to kiss it. She contented herself watching Katie walk.

  Robert and Eleanor were in the break room munching on pizza, so Abby couldn’t chat with Katie one-on-one, which was a little disappointing, but at least she was able to be near her. On the plus side, Katie followed her back to the reading room.

  “How far along are you in that box?” she asked as they entered.

  “Almost done. And seriously, Katrina had the hots for Ichabod.”

  Katie laughed. “Right? I was waiting for you to get that far. I think they had a rendezvous,” she said, putting salacious emphasis on “rendezvous.”

  “I totally see that. I’m almost up to when he disappeared, at least according to legend.”

  Katie took the chair next to her. “I don’t think Ichabod died that night.”

  Abby looked over at her. “I don’t, either. I mean, I don’t have proof, but it doesn’t feel right.”

  “So what happened to him?”

  Abby put her gloves back on and returned a folder to the box. “If Katrina and Ichabod were having an affair, maybe somebody found out about it. Ichabod had some ideas that weren’t too popular with a lot of people then, and maybe it was a bad idea for them to be seeing each other. After all, Baltus wanted Katrina to marry Brom.”

  “So if he didn’t die, what happened?”

  Abby pulled the next folder. “I think he either got run out of town or Katrina asked him to leave to protect himself.”

  “I like that. A romance for the ages. Maybe Ichabod escaped and he and Katrina carried on an affair for years. Maybe they even had kids. Which means you might have some relatives out there that you didn’t even know about.”

  “Cranes galore,” Abby said with a grin.

  Katie smiled. She pushed back from the table and stood. “I’ll let you get back to work. Just wanted to see how you’re doing. Catch you later. For sure tomorrow.”

  “Definitely.” Abby watched her leave, trying not to be obvious, but Katie threw her a look from the other side of the glass door that made her insides feel like she was on a rollercoaster. As delicious as this crush was, it was also confusing. She didn’t know if Katie was single. And she wasn’t going to ask, since she was only here another few days and starting anything with someone would invariably lead to complications and long-distance crap.

  Unless Katie was just into a fling. Abby opened the file and stared at the first page without seeing it. Could she herself do a fling? Katie was attractive. Funny. Interesting. Could Abby have a crazy passionate affair with someone she’d just met? Women like Katie definitely made her consider that option, though she preferred something a little slower, with a super hot buildup. She focused on the open file. Consider that later, she remonstrated herself. She was here to gather information and materials for her dissertation.

  An hour later, she came upon a letter from Katrina to Johanna that mentioned Ichabod’s disappearance, dated mid-November, 1799. “My dear Mr. Crane has not been seen for several days. Brom reports that the horseman appeared the night Mr. Crane was last seen, and frightened him so badly that he ran and may have become lost in the forest. I know better. And I shall tell you about it the next time I see you, though I’m sure you have guessed, as well, what happened.”

  Abby read through the rest of the letters. “What happened?” she asked the silent files. “Come on, Katrina. Don’t leave me hanging like this.” Dammit. History mystery, and she was so close. So damn close to finding something out about Ichabod. She took box six back to Lu and switched it out with box seven and started immediately reading to see if Katrina mentioned anything else about Ichabod. Almost through the box and into the year 1800, she hadn’t mentioned him at all.

  “What the hell?” Abby muttered. A guy Katrina clearly had something with disappears and that’s it? No further mentions? She went back through, starting with the end of 1799 and going through the summer of 1800. No mention of Ichabod.

  “That’s cold,” Abby said to the box. Katrina had let Johanna, especially, believe that Ichabod meant something to her and then she totally dropped him from her vocabulary after he disappeared. She felt an odd protectiveness for Ichabod, two hundred years after the fact. “She burned you,” she said to him. She knew what that was like, so she sympathized with him. Even if he had died on that night, and not known that Katrina hadn’t been that into him, Abby still felt bad for him.

  “How are things going?” Lu stood at the door, holding it open. Abby hadn’t noticed her approach.

  “He really did disappear. Not just in legend, but from the historical record.”

  “Well, from these records, anyway.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.” Abby leaned back in her chair. “Why would you not mention someone you had feelings for after he disappears? All her correspondence to Johanna up to that point indicates that she really liked him. And then he disappears and…nothing.”

  Lu offered a wan smile. “Perhaps she was grieving. Sometimes that’s how people cope. Especially then, before counseling. People did what they had to do to deal with tragedy.”

  Abby considered that, but it didn’t feel right. Katrina had shared quite a bit with Johanna and some of her other relatives and friends. Not mentioning Ichabod after his disappearance seemed out of character for her. “Maybe those letters to Johanna are missing,” Abby said. “Where she mentioned him after he disappeared.”

  “That’s possible, but this is one of the most—if not the most—complete collections of the Van Tassel family’s materials, and I don’t know of any other letters to Johanna in any other collection. Which reminds me, I’m still trying to find out if there’s a journal that Johanna left that perhaps we missed. I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks. But seriously, it seems so sad, to just stop talking about him like that.”

  “We do take history personally,” Lu said with a chuckle. “Since you’ve read into 1800, I presume you’ve come across Elizabeth in Katrina’s letters.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s another mystery. Katrina never refers to a last name for her, so we don’t know who she was. But they do seem to share a bond of sorts. At any rate, we’ll be closing in an hour.”

  Abby nodded. “Okay. Thanks for the heads-up. I seem to lose track of time in here.”

  “Contemporary time.”

  Abby laughed. “Good point.”

  Lu smiled and left and Abby sat for a moment, thinking. She hadn’t really paid attention to Elizabeth. Maybe she should. She started reading again, from the days after Ichabod disappeared and found what appeared to be Elizabeth’s first appearance in December, in a letter Katrina wrote to Johanna. “My dear friend Elizabeth shall be accompanying me to New York next month, and I’m sure you will find her company enjoyable, though certainly not as enjoyable as I. You know a bit about the story of our meeting—”

  Wait. What? Abby went back through the letters. Had she missed mention of that? No, she hadn’t. No mention of it. But in November of 1799, Katrina said she would be visiting New York for Christmas. She must’ve told Johanna about Elizabeth in person over the holiday. She deliberately said nothing a
bout her until she was in New York, physically in the presence of Johanna. Abby frowned. Which meant she didn’t want to mention anything about her in a letter.

  “Why the hell didn’t you keep a journal?” Abby asked the letter. She continued reading, this time much more carefully with regard to Elizabeth, and by the time she’d gotten through box seven, she was convinced that the mysterious Elizabeth was, in fact, another target of Katrina’s ardor. “She is handsome, for a woman,” Katrina wrote in March 1800. “Of that sort of beauty one is drawn to whether the bearer is male or female. And, dear Johanna, she is utterly devoted to education, especially for those less privileged. I feel a continued connection with her, and long for each time I see her, and hear her laugh. She will be here in two days’ time. I can scarcely wait.”

  Okay, this was an interesting turn of events. Katrina dumped (or got over really quickly) Ichabod for a woman. Abby checked the clock. Damn. Time to go. She carefully packed up box seven just as Lu appeared.

  “And what have you decided about Elizabeth?” Lu asked as she checked the box and Abby’s laptop bag.

  “I think Katrina was in love with her.”

  “That’s what Katie and I think. Robert is less convinced, using the old ‘language and times were different then’ argument to suggest they were just good friends. Eleanor goes back and forth between my argument and Robert’s.”

  “It seems that Elizabeth returned her affections, at least from the letters included here. Are there letters between Katrina and Elizabeth?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Not that we know of.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Oh, you’ll find mention of her throughout the next few years. Katrina, sadly, died about ten years after Ichabod disappeared. Elizabeth is present in Katrina’s letters until the end.”

  Abby slung her bag over her shoulder. “Did Katrina have kids?”

  “She ended up marrying Brom Bones in 1803.”

  Abby groaned. “So that part of the legend is true.”