Wheels within wheels within wheels…
He watched the dark figure warily as he snapped the trunk closed on the motionless, glassy-eyed body of Jason Crane.
INTERLUDE
Don’t spill. Don’t spill. Don’t spill. Don’t spill.
Kate tried to keep the tray steady, ascending one step at a time, keeping her eyes on the seasickened bowl of pea soup, on the slice of plain Wonder Bread, white as the napkin, on the tarnished spoon, on the crystalline bud vase with its one browning Easter lily. Her reflection blinked up from the silver tray. A girl of seven with dark circles under her eyes, with flyaway corn-silk hair pinned by a rose barrette. Her nose ran with snot. Kate sniffed the booger back but couldn’t wipe without spilling the soup. Once she brought Mama her dinner, then she could blow.
Don’t spill. Don’t spill. Don’t spill.
The stairs were endless. How long had she climbed them? A minute? An eternity? Springtime would pass her by, her bike unridden, her pony unbroken, and she’d still be climbing these steps. Forever.
Don’t spill. Don’t spill.
The red velvet carpet up the creaky stairs made an endless ribbon of blood. Slick, so she kept sliding back. Family portraits drifted to meet her, riding a current of fuzzy green wallpaper, stolid faces reprimanding the tardy little nurse. “Such a bad caregiver!” “Aren’t you ashamed?” Aunt Madeleine scowled, her father scowled, and so did the whole line of Ushers. They were right. Mama was waiting. She needed to eat, to keep her strength up. That’s what the lady oncologist had said. And Kate would see to it. She sniffed hard, again, and held back her tears.
Don’t. Spill.
If only she could reach the top. If only she could wipe her nose. That would make everything right. A clock chimed below, in the big empty house. The Big Ben chime of the ebony grandfather clock in the Usher entry hall. She counted each “bong,” gaining a stair with each one. But she counted thirteen. That wasn’t right. No clock strikes thirteen. That would be a time beyond time.
As the very last bell faded away, she reached the top of the stairs at last. But now the endless dark hallway stretched ahead. Her mother’s white bedroom door receded as she walked. Kate sniffed, trying to hold the snot in, desperate not to spill the soup. Another bell broke the silence. Mama’s come-help-me bell, tinkling weakly.
“Coming, Mama,” Kate called, as if reassuring a kitten she’d lost down a well. The lily had swiveled in its vase, shaking its head at her. She couldn’t meet its gaze.
The sconces along the hallway burned with dim gaslight. The tapestries passing, heavy and stained, bore ravens and cats and embroidered faces, tormented roses and endless ivy, with little green leaves like the ace of spades, like the tail of Old Scratch in a Brothers Grimm woodcut.
Something bit into the flesh of Kate’s hand. A tiny red fire ant, curled in a ball, bright and burning as the tip of a safety match. She winced, sniffed, but did not spill the soup. Good girl. Good girl.
Mama’s bell rang “come-help-me” again.
“I’m coming,” Kate called.
The bedroom door grew larger. Just outside it sat a little tea cart, draped in red velvet. It bore orange bottles of OxyContin and a clear vial of DOXOrubicin HCL and red-lettered syringes for hydromorphone. Kate reached the big white door but found it shut and had no free hand to turn the crystal knob.
Mama’s bell rang.
“I’m here!” Kate said. “I’m here!” She bent and lowered the tray to the floor. The green swill in the delicate china bowl lurched, and a drop splattered the silver. No no no. It wasn’t much of a spill though. She hadn’t wet the bread. Kate reached out a trembling hand and twisted the wobbly doorknob. The bedroom door opened with a moan of pain that didn’t come from the hinges. Kate hurriedly wiped her nose with the back of her hand and fetched the silver tray up from the floor.
The heavy furniture wore shapeless red velvet. Mama’s lightless windows hung with red velvet too. Cracks covered the gilt-framed mirrors. Kate puzzled at her own reflection. A young woman looked back from the glass, a teenaged Kate, imprisoned by the spider web of disjointed reflections. A trick of the candlelight.
She caught a whiff of sweat and talcum and something else. Mama’s nightgown would need changing again. Mama had drawn the canopy tight around her four-poster bed. She couldn’t take the light. The sickness had heightened her senses. That happened with all the Ushers. Through the red velvet folds, one slender claw dangled limply, clutching the little gold bell.
Kate raised the tray. “I have dinner, Mama.”
“Noooo,” came the weak voice beyond the drapery.
“You need to eat.”
“I’m… not… hungry.” Every vowel hurt to hear. Ai… Ah… Uh… Ee…
“You have to eat.”
“Wan’… my… pills.”
“Eat first.” Kate walked toward the shrouded bed, careful to avoid the many black anthills that dotted the carpet. “Just a little soup.”
The claw threw its bell at the wall. “The pain…”
“I know,” Kate said. “I know.” She knelt at bedside, set the tray on the floor, and pressed a spoon into the palsied hand. “But eat a little first.”
Mama dropped the spoon. “There’s no point.”
“Please, Mama.”
“We can’t fight the future, Katherine.”
“Yes, we can. And we’re gonna.” Kate picked the spoon back up, pressed it into the hand again. “You’re not giving up.”
The spoon dropped. “Have you broken your pony yet?”
Kate picked up the spoon, turned it in her hands. “Gunsmoke throws me. I’m scared of him.”
“That’s good. You’re learning to face fear. Break your fear. Don’t let it break you. Learn to ride it.”
“Eat, Mama.” She pressed the spoon into the claw.
“No.” It dropped again. “I’m going to die.”
“Not if you eat.”
“I’m going to die!” The hand turned palm-up. “Read me, little prophetess. Read me.”
“No.”
“Read my future.”
“No! There’s got to be a way!”
Mama’s hand seized Kate’s in a fierce grip. Kate’s Gift engaged. But how? She was only seven! She wouldn’t have her Gift for years!
Mourners in black suits and somber dresses appear all around the room. Mama rests in her closed coffin. A tuft of red velvet has caught in the lid.
Kate’s father sits in straight-backed chair next to a memorial wreath of roses and says, “I can’t believe she went so quickly.”
“Just like Daddy,” whispers Aunt Madeleine, shaking her head, raising a teacup behind her black veil.
“NO!” screamed Kate.
She tore her arm free. The mourners disappeared, the wreath disappeared, the coffin disappeared.
“No, Mama. If you love me, fight it. Fight it!” She pressed the spoon into the hand. “Eat!”
“I do love you, baby.”
“Then eat, Mama!”
“I do love you.”
“Then eat. If you don’t… then… I don’t believe you! I don’t believe you love me! I don’t believe you!” Kate bent and reached for the soup bowl, but the red ants had gotten into it, like a spill of cayenne pepper. They’d swarmed the slice of bread, too, carrying it away in a thousand crumbs, like a spill of popcorn across the floor. “No!” She looked up. Endless trails of red ants embroidered the velvet of the canopy bed. “No! No! No!”
The arm withdrew into soft folds of darkness. “Goodbye, Katie.”
“Eat, Mama!”
Kate rose, steeled herself, and with a violent motion parted the drapes, enduring a rain of stings. Her mother swarmed with bright red ants. Millions upon millions of them, eating and eating. Eating her mama. Carrying her off one bite, one cell, one second at a time. Her patchy hair ran red. A hill of ants covered her face like a suffocating pillow. Kate panicked, cupped a palm, and tried desperately to brush the things away, enduring countless bites. But th
ere were too many of them. Too many. Too many.
Something cold splashed her leg.
She’d spilled the soup.
Her tears spilled after.
“I don’t believe you love me. Or else you’d eat. You don’t love me. You don’t love me. Nobody loves me.”
A hand fell on her shoulder. She jumped. Her daddy stood at her side in a somber black suit. “Mama’s gone, Katie.”
Kate looked up at him, her hands bright with endless stings. A little void had opened up in her, and her soul fluttered into it, seeking shelter. “Gone where?”
“To be with Him.”
Kate sniffed. “With God?”
“No,” said Usher, pointing. “Him. Him. Him. Him! HIM!”
Kate turned to the bed. The ants writhed aside in heavy red clumps, revealing the rancid snarling bone-thing that had carried Mama away. Death flew at Kate with claws extended. She grabbed its wrists.
“No! No! No!”
Ants climbed her body with endless runners of red fire.
“I won’t give up! I won’t give up! I won’t give up!”
And then there was only the struggle, the desperation, and the fight against despair.
PART TWO
CHAPTER NINE
“The Receiving Vault”
Summer waned. The sun still kissed the waters of the Hudson, but less passionately, like a bride having second thoughts. The days grew a minute shorter, the shadows a millimeter longer, and fear descended upon Sleepy Hollow just as imperceptibly. Even in the heat of July, when the town still wore shorts and sandals. When it still carried ice chests and pressed beers to its forehead. When its children played in sand piles and its old men sat talking baseball.
The drought had persisted. The blotch on the hill had spread to the village, bringing dry rot. Flowers wilted in window boxes. Lawns withered. Fruit flies invaded homes. Roaches and mice nested behind bedroom walls. Glue traps appeared in corners. Ribbons of flypaper hung from doorframes. Housewives fled their kitchens, setting bug bombs to poison the air.
Bad things began to happen. Everywhere, it seemed.
On the afternoon of July tenth, two Tarrytown women went shopping at the Barnes Stationery Store. Both reached for the last package of lace wedding invitations at the same time. Their confrontation ended with bloody fists and an ambulance ride.
On July fourteenth, Larry Putnam choked on a California spring roll at Andy Ng’s Japanese sushi restaurant on Beekman Avenue. Andy performed the Heimlich maneuver, but Larry died on the sidewalk out front. His widow laid him to rest in the cemetery three days later, and he rose that same night to join the Horseman’s Army.
The following Saturday, Judy Jessup found Gypsy, her daughter’s black cat, dead, strung up on the fence behind their house, just dangling there, eyes open and fangs bared. Her tail had been cut off.
On Sunday, worshipers at Christ Episcopal Church found one marble hand chopped from the statue of the Blessed Virgin.
On the morning of July twentieth, all the parking meters on Broadway were discovered half-ripped from the sidewalk, pointing northward toward the cemetery.
Graffiti appeared on stop signs, on street signs, scrawled across the red brick high school, and gouged into the bark of trees. Graffiti no Tarrytowner had ever seen before: arcane symbols and illegible writing, like the scribblings of a schizophrenic. On the first of August, a group of local businesses banded together to scrub the graffiti out. Teams of kids and adults spent a sweaty afternoon with sea sponges and elbow grease, putting their backs into it, trying to keep their town beautiful. But the graffiti reappeared the following morning, just as livid as before. That same night, Jennifer the waitress found similar symbols drawn on her soup-of-the-day chalkboard and gouged into the laminate tabletops in all the booths of the Horseman Restaurant.
Come sunset, fireflies hung thick above the lawns of the Hollow. Red eyes peered through the shutters of abandoned houses. A mist rose from the parched earth and hung low, especially behind the Old Dutch Church, among the graves of the ancient burying ground. The Old Croton Aqueduct Trail, usually a summer playground, grew eerily empty. Hardly anyone walked there, especially at night, when gnarled branches held hands and rustled to each other around cauldron clearings of moonlight. Those who did so reported strange attacks, gossamer apparitions, and the distant sound of horse’s hooves.
The murders had stopped, thank God. The ten o’clock curfew came to an end on August third. But the village reinstated it on August fourteenth. Mayor Nielsen called yet another press conference, and Officer David Martinez announced more grim news.
“The victim’s name is Dr. Donald Tamper, general practitioner at Phelps Memorial hospital. Dr. Tamper was last seen leaving his shift Wednesday in the early morning. We believe he was attacked in the parking lot. No body has been found.”
“Do you suspect the Horseman Killer?” shouted a reporter.
“We are considering that possibility, but we urge people to stay calm and not jump to conclusions.”
Another raised a hand. “Any update on the disappearance of your son?”
Martinez sighed. “No. Please pray for our family. And for all the families who—”
“Aren’t you going to do something?” shouted a woman at the back of the room. “Isn’t anyone going to do something?”
The words hung in the air, motionless as the mist on the burying ground. Martinez scowled, shuffled his papers, and left the podium.
The assembled reporters stared at the village insignia as they filed from the press room. It bore an image of the Horseman, jet black against a white background. They stared at it as if they’d never seen it properly before. Eleven years prior, after the GM plant had closed, when the village of North Tarrytown had been rechristened “Sleepy Hollow,” it had seemed natural to adopt the Horseman as town mascot. He appeared on the badges of the police officers, on the sides of the fire trucks, on the menus of restaurants, on the stationery of the mayor. He arose from his grave as a tchotchke in the gift shops. He haunted the helmets of the football team, the windows of the bike shop, the rings presented to outgoing seniors. The black-cloaked figure of the Headless Horseman manifested everywhere, ubiquitous as Mickey Mouse in the Magic Kingdom, and almost as subliminal. People had grown used to the Horseman, fond of him even. Eventually they had ceased to notice him.
They noticed him now.
And they noticed him everywhere. On hats and collar pins and park signs, on cars and buses. On statues, on plaques, on the side of the Chevron. The Horseman galloped down Beekman Avenue, shop window by shop window. He rode up Broadway, along College Avenue, across Wildey Street and through Patriots Park. He rode in daylight and in darkness and in the nightmares of their children.
Their fondness for the figure became fear, dread, and doubt.
Why had they named their town after a ghost story? To name a thing is to give it power, to give it substance and flesh. What had they done? Each sunset, as the village of Sleepy Hollow sank deeper into shadow, more and more former North Tarrytowners wondered if embracing The Legend hadn’t been a mistake.
But they had to press forward. The mill wheel turns. Summer ends. Time comes for school to start. The ball glove goes into the closet. Grandfather asks for a jacket. Beer becomes coffee, or pumpkin spice. A leaf turns, falls, and twists. The season comes. There’s money to be made. Time to unpack the fright masks, to fetch the scarecrow from his firehouse closet. Time to bundle the cornstalks and light the pumpkins.
Time for the Headless Horseman to menace the tourists again.
Eddie Martinez stood in twilight, raised his hand to the fieldstones of the Old Dutch Church, and brushed them with his fingertips. A shadow hung there, very faint. A shadow of smoke, as if a burying ground campfire had sooted the mortar. No one else would have noticed, but he did.
Crack!
Eddie tensed. His breath became ragged. He’d thundered down that hill, hatchet high, on the heels of Jason Crane, last Halloween. The Headl
ess Horseman had. Embodied by ash, he’d spurred a stallion of sticks and leaves, and the kid had fled him in terror and stocking feet, desperate to reach holy ground. Jason had jumped from that broken headstone, just there, had thrown himself through the church window and—
Crack!
Eddie’s body broke against the stones and scattered. He grinned. He liked these Horseman memories. He liked the ruthlessness of them. The focus. The simplicity. The feeling of being stripped down to a single purpose. The Horseman didn’t care about shit. Not his dead-end gas station job, not his father’s opinion, not his grades. He didn’t care about getting laid or getting drunk. The Horseman was a machine. He got the job done. He imposed his will on the world. He was pure. Like Schwarzenegger in his Mr. Universe days. Eyes on the prize. Whatever it takes. Just do it.
Eddie took a knee at the mist-shrouded grave of the Horseman, that shallow depression near the northern wall. One of the church’s weathervanes threw a black cross into the grass. The only grave marker the ghost would ever have.
I’m down there.
No. He’s down there.
But why separate the two of them anymore? The Horseman’s body rotted down there, sure, but his soul lived in Eddie. They were… kindred spirits, like Siamese twins joined at the chakra or some shit like that. Fused on the night of the meteor shower. One Monster, now.
Another memory rose. The earth moved against his back. Someone dragged him by one arm, across dirt. Hands slipped beneath his headless torso and rolled him over. The ground disappeared and he fell, hard, landing with his spine unnaturally bent. A shovelful of dirt hit his chest. No. Not dirt. Quicklime. That’s what they put in a mass grave. Quicklime to dissolve the soft tissues, to make room for the others. The other dead who came tumbling after. Like linemen sacking a quarterback.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Six dead colonials. Holding him down.
Eddie shot to his feet and swung his arms, as if to throw off the weight of the corpses. He flipped his collar to hide his face and stalked up the aisle of headstones. He couldn’t stand feeling helpless like that. His dad used to hold him down, sometimes, when they wrestled. (“What are you gonna do now, son, huh? What are you gonna do now?”) It was like being pinned under a rock, with nothing to do but scream your face purple. No. Worse. Rocks don’t taunt you and laugh at your predicament. (“What are you gonna do now, son, huh? What are you gonna do now?”) Those wrestling matches had stopped on Eddie’s thirteenth birthday. He’d freed a fist and bloodied his father’s nose. (“That! That’s what I’m gonna do! You like it? Huh? You like it?”) And his father had liked it. That had been the right answer. David Martinez had wiped his nose on a wad of NFL giftwrap and had given a thumbs-up. Eddie had liked it too. Any punch that drew blood was a good one.
SLEEPY HOLLOW: General of the Dead (Jason Crane Book 3) Page 9
