SLEEPY HOLLOW: General of the Dead (Jason Crane Book 3)

by Gleaves, Richard

  They pushed on. A Jeep Grand Cherokee sat parked on the gravel circle in front of the receiving vault. A woman waited for them there. Her face was gaunt and pale, her red dress a deep burgundy in the moonlight. She switched on a harsh bulb and the dress flared violent red.

  “Snap that off,” said Keegan. “We don’t have a permit.”

  She obeyed, and the group huddled in the darkness.

  “Let’s split up,” said Brennan. “Alyson, go north and start communing. Keegan, take an EVP recorder and the SB7 spirit box and make friends. Get some shots from the hilltop while you’re at it. I’ll do night vision and Blair Witch the hell out of this place. Cool?”

  “We’ve ghostbusted before, Bill Murray.” Keegan strode to the edge of the clearing. He turned sideways and slipped between the mausoleums, EVP recorder raised high, whispering to the shadows, “I am Vinz Clortho, Keymaster of Gozer! Are you the Gatekeeper?”

  Brennan and Alyson strode up the gravel ruts and headed north. The firefly followed, still eavesdropping.

  “What did you accomplish tonight?” said Brennan.

  “I talked my way into Philipsburg Manor.”

  “The old mill by the pond?”

  “I spoke to the groundskeeper. To see if anybody’s had a visitation. He loves the place—like he’s working in his own personal Scooby Doo episode. He said he hadn’t seen any ghosts, but he had two ground crew who couldn’t even finish out a night.”

  “Scared?”

  “He said there was this one huge guy. Made you look like a junior petite. Six-four, six-five. The guy got bigger as the story went on. Let’s say five-foot eighteen inches. He hired him to work night security. And the guy was all, ‘I don’t like spiders, I don’t like rats, and I don’t like the dark.’”

  “But he was five-eighteen.”

  “Right? And they get all kinds of orb-weavers over there in the barn, and rats too. And the guy was working after midnight.”

  “So three out of three.”

  “If you don’t like spiders, rats, or the dark, this poor guy was in the wrong job. He’d expected a wall full of monitors, not stalking around outside. So around one a.m. on his first night, this newbie called in on his walkie saying, ‘There are ghosts. I can’t work here. There are ghosts!’ The director drove in from Yonkers and the guy gave him his keys and his phone and his notice and tore ass out of the parking lot. Right through the red light.”

  “So what did he see?”

  “Figures in the window of the manor.”

  “Legit?”

  “The groundskeeper thought it was reflections in the glass. He laughed it off. By this point in the story the newbie was seven foot two and four hundred fifty. He says, ‘A guy that size? And scared of the dark? What a waste of big!’”

  Brennan chuckled. “Did you get that on camera?”

  “He froze up when I tried. Sorry. He let me film on the little bridge over the dam. It’s beautiful there at twilight. The old millwheel, the willows trailing in the water. You know. Evocative. I took some EVP recordings—basics. ‘Does anyone want to communicate?’ ‘Do you have a message for the living?’ I’ll check for replies when we get the tapes home.” Alyson spoke in a whisper, her voice barely rising over the gravel-crunch of their steps. “There was one funny moment…”

  “What?”

  “I asked, ‘Was anyone killed at this millpond?’ And, I swear, the water went smack! and splashed the front of my dress. The EVP at that point is mostly me swearing.”

  “What was it?”

  “The groundskeeper thought it was a beaver. They slap the water sometimes. But I felt… something. I had the name ‘Frank’ very loud in my head. I was told a man came up dead in the water, last October. And… this is weird. There used to be a family of geese in that pond. They vanished. Just this summer. Like the water had gone sour. There were a lot of dead fish around the edge, just eyes watching you, and a smell… not fishy. Sweet. I don’t know…”

  They walked in silence, but for the crunching of their soles. They reached a crossroads. To the left, the admin office of the cemetery loomed black, like the castle of Vlad the Impaler, scowling beneath the stars.

  “When do we meet back up?” Alyson whispered.

  “Depends on how talkative the dead are. I have my walkie.”

  Alyson gave him a peck. “Get us out of here by midnight and I’ll buy you new cologne. I can smell your ectoplasm at ten paces.”

  Brennan chuckled. He turned on his camera and pointed it at himself as he walked off. “I’m going deeper into the cemetery now,” he whispered breathlessly. “I’m feeling a… female presence… very cold… and a name that starts with… an ‘A’. This is some freaky stuff! I’m really scared right now!”

  Alyson turned on her own camera. She stood in silence, gathering herself, then walked past the workmen’s carts toward the community mausoleum. The firefly hesitated at the crossroads. It turned left and followed the woman. Alyson held her camera to her face. Her eyelids fluttered and she hummed softly, her fingers trailing across the stone of the mausoleum building as if searching for a hidden message in braille.

  “Are you unquiet?” she said. “Are you seeking a channel into our world? Let me be that channel…”

  She turned a corner. Something clattered, and she jerked back. The handle of a shovel lurched toward her and touched her navel. It had only shifted in its tool bin. That’s all. She’d brushed it herself, hadn’t she?

  “Is someone here?”

  The firefly darted over her shoulder. It slipped behind her, trailing its light up and down her red dress, like the dot of a laser pointer. It touched the back of her neck, then dodged the hand that tried to slap it away.

  “I’m feeling a cold spot,” Alyson whispered, holding the camera high. “I’m drawn… in this direction.” She pointed north. “The sensation is very strong.” She cut across a patch of gravel and entered a cave of overhanging willows, delving deep into darkness until only the indicator light of her camera remained, drifting through the night as if Alyson Baldock had become a firefly herself.

  Brennan pointed his camera toward a dark patch on the ground—a rectangle of turned earth, olive green in night vision.

  “That’s one of the kids that died last week. I think they just buried him this afternoon. His flowers are still fresh. Maybe that’s what I smell. Maybe someone left garlic so he doesn’t rise up and bite me. The little sign says ‘Denerik.’ Are you here, Denerik? Do you want to tell me what happened to you? Denerik, did the Horseman kill you?”

  He heard a distant sound. clip-clop clip-clop.

  No way.

  clip-clop clip-clop. clip-clop clip-clop.

  The sound vanished.

  Brennan shook off a chill. He left the grave and sat on the steps of a tomb, beneath an urn of dead flowers, talking into his camcorder, held between his knees.

  “I’m serious here,” he whispered. “I am really freaking out right now. There are… figures… hiding behind these trees. I keep catching them… out of the corner of my eye. I’ve never been in a cemetery that felt like this one.” He wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow. “I thought I saw some ghost a while ago. This white orb hanging above the graves. I went up and poked it with my finger. Orb-weaver. Big spider sac, like a lump of cotton candy. When I poked it, this smell came out. Like the spider eggs had died. We had spiders like that on Lake Tawakoni when I was little. Long-jawed spiders. Crawling on the houses, the driveways. Everywhere. Making canopies in those branches over the water. Jumping from branch to branch.”

  Something small and black fell on his shoulder. He shot to his feet and brushed it away, nearly hyperventilating. He searched for it on the ground and stomped on it. Just a fallen flower from the urn above.

  “Shit.” He let out a long breath. “I’m in the wrong business.”

  The firefly slipped from behind the urn and flew on.

  Keegan Garrity stood on the crest of the cemetery and held his SB7 spirit box bene
ath the chin of the marble Jesus.

  “Anything to say?” he asked.

  He thumbed the switch, and the device’s speaker hissed with white noise, cold and still. He listened—for anything. He’d always loved this part: listening to the white noise, listening for the ghosts, like the little girl in Poltergeist whispering to TV static. Sometimes he’d hear a word, sometimes a mere syllable. But now he heard only the hiss of white noise, like a brook snoring on a stone pillow.

  He stepped over a hanging chain, holding the spirit box in his upturned palm. It exhaled static, offering its air to any spirit who wished to borrow it—as another might use a tracheostomy valve to speak.

  “I—” the device chirped. A small female voice.

  Keegan froze and whispered, “They’re heee-eere…”

  He checked the frequency indicators—making sure he hadn’t caught a blip of CB radio or some talk show host bleeding through the AM bands. But it was set squarely between 76MHz and 87.9MHz, in a range typically used only by Japanese broadcasters. It should be free of chatter, so—

  “I am—” the device chirped again.

  “Hello?” Keegan pressed his palm over the speaker to talk over it. “What do you want to say? You are what? Are you dead? Are you… caught between worlds?”

  A firefly appeared. It drifted over Keegan’s shoulder, traveled down his arm, and sat blinking over the back of his hand. He took his palm away, slowly, so that the firefly floated in the wash of white noise. It blinked.

  “I am—” blurted the spirit box. “I’m K-K-K-K.”

  “What are you?” Keegan bent his head, bringing his ear to the device.

  The voice was tiny but distinct.

  “I’m Kate Usher.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “The Fallen General”

  Kate swooned, exhausted by the effort. She fought to reclaim her equilibrium.

  “Here!” she cried. “I’m here!”

  If she still possessed arms, she would have waved them to get the man’s attention. She circled Keegan, or rather, he circled her. It felt the same. She couldn’t tell the difference between moving and standing still. Gravity had no meaning for Kate anymore. The world rolled and lurched, as if she floated in a barrel through heavy seas, with no firm place to put her feet.

  She cried out again. “Help!”

  She felt ridiculous, crying out to this giant man, who was probably no taller than she had been. Crying out over and over, like the spider-menaced hero at the end of The Fly. (“Help me! Help me!”) Or—more pathetic—like a resident of Seuss’s Whoville, perched upon a dandelion top, begging to be heard, lest the evil kangaroo dump her world into a vat of boiling beezle-nut oil.

  “I am here!” she cried. “I am here! I am here! I am here!”

  She lost her balance again. The cemetery flipped, and she felt like Atlas, carrying the entire world on her shoulders and only the sky to stand on. She’d lost the ghost hunter. She listened for the hiss of the spirit box, followed it, and found him again. She concentrated, trying to be heard, but after a minute or so Keegan had stopped listening. He thumbed a switch, the spirit box fell silent, and he raised his walkie-talkie.

  “You there, boss?”

  “Shit. You scared me,” barked Brennan. His voice was tiny, like another another ghost, speaking from another spirit box.

  “Have you ever heard of someone named Kate Usher?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Spirit box. I got it on tape. Female voice. Gave that name. ‘I’m Kate Usher.’ Clear as crystal.”

  “Any Ushers buried up there?”

  “Not that I see.”

  “Do you want us to stop and figure it out, or can it wait?”

  “I’ve got a feeling.”

  “Okay. Fine. Frankly I could use a break. This place is… wild, man. Meet me by the jeep. We’ll look up the name on the internet.”

  “I’m just above there. I’ll start down.”

  Kate laughed inwardly. She somersaulted in midair, letting the world dance. This was the closest she’d come to real human—living human—contact in a month. She felt herself blinking with happiness. Her light kissed Keegan’s left foot.

  She had no memory of how she’d come to be here, or where she’d been the moment before she awoke. The last thing she remembered was Agathe attacking her in her bedroom on July fourth. Agathe possessing Red, shooting Big Gulp, claiming her. Then blackness… then…

  “I beat him…”

  Had Agathe banished her to the Spirit World? And had Kate come back? She’d grown up on all that stuff, on the lore of Founders. She felt disappointed that she didn’t remember the Other Realm, if she’d been there. It would be so cool to see how Founders got their Gifts. But no one remembered that stuff. Why should she be the exception?

  Something weird had happened to her, that was for sure. She’d been thrown from this world into the next and had returned. She’d awakened in the cemetery, in her own body—on her knees in gravel, swallowed by the shadow of the Headless Horseman. But Agathe had risen like vomit and pushed her out again. Not into the Spirit World, not this time—but into this feeble twilight existence.

  “Run, honey,” someone had whispered, and Kate had run. Fled, anyway, careening through a world of stones and mists and shadows, unable to think or to plan for the longest time, learning what it is to exist without breathing, to see without eyes, to think with only dust and moonlight for synapses.

  She’d tried to contact people. She’d waited outside her father’s window, chased his car, lurked in the grass, waved futilely to Mather—even to that hateful Jessica Bridge. She’d fluttered around Zef whenever he visited their spot on the roof, but he’d just waved her away. She’d followed Joey through the cemetery one night after finding him bent over a Ouija board, but she hadn’t been able to get his attention either.

  It was from listening to Joey that she’d discovered that Jason was… dead. That had been hard. She’d hidden in a culvert for days, letting the drip of water do her weeping for her. Oh, she’d been so angry. She’d battered herself against Agathe so many times, trying to reclaim her body. She’d hovered outside the octagonal attic window of Gory Brook, raging at the witch. How dare she move and eat and breathe and speak with Kate’s arms and teeth and lungs and lips? How dare she bloody Kate’s hands? How dare she… kill Jason? She was lucky not to have a body, maybe. She might have cried herself to death by now. Fireflies can’t cry. They can hardly do… anything. Just float and blink and float and blink.

  She was tired of floating and blinking and blinking and floating and then blinking some more.

  Other ghosts—and surely Kate was some species of ghost now—didn’t have her problems. They were perfectly capable of building spectral bodies, showing themselves to each other, like reflections in a pane of glass, hanging transparent over the landscape behind. Those other ghosts looked at Kate with something like pity, like she was some special-needs ghost, feeble-minded, unable to make a body or grasp big words.

  Those spirits had homes to go to, but Kate had no grave. Her body still walked the earth without her. Every sunrise, she cowered inside the tombs of ghost-hosts who were feeling generous, under rocks or inside pipes if they turned her away. She had to hide from the sun, or else it would drive her mad with proof of her own intangibility.

  If Kate concentrated, she could see the other dead as they slept underground. The topsoil became transparent to her, and she watched the sleepers abed in their cots. Most of them, anyway. Those who slept in graves with a metal vault above their coffins were less distinct, like shadows stirring inside translucent igloos.

  The souls of the Sleepy Hollow dead rested under the earth, eyes closed, nestled alongside their own remains as another might spoon a loved one. And they dreamed. Some of them had good dreams—they slept with smiles and a sort of radiance. Others writhed in their coffins, clutching their own rotted bones, wailing with regret or anger or guilt. All spirits dream of their lives. That’s what Ka
te had overheard, anyway. Those who lived well re-experienced triumphs and loves, moments of courage and bravery, adventures and romances and defeats borne with dignity. They wandered through a garden of beautiful moments, with all eternity to revisit each one. A ghost named Rosalie Daniels dreamt of the little diner she’d owned, of polishing the counter to mirror-brightness, of making grilled cheese and pickles for her sweet granddaughter, of bouquets of Indian paintbrush, of raising arms to greet her beloved husband. Rosalie’s sleep was peaceful and fine.

  But dark-lived ghosts slept in a hall of mirrors, reliving their crimes from the perspective of their victims, growing ever more desperate to escape themselves. A ghost named TJ Beck had watched himself steal a widow’s wedding band, every night, over and over, for centuries, feeling the woman’s pain as he stole her last link to a fallen love. Beck never rose, and never woke. He cried spectral tears that spilled down his cheeks, cutting deep canyons of bloody guilt that exposed eyeteeth.

  Another sad ghost was William Crane, father of Ichabod. But he spoke to no one in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. He didn’t live there. His skull, the others said, was in the aqueduct tunnels, down with the rest of Agathe’s victims. They spoke in whispers that a legion of tormented spirits lived in those chambers. Kate didn’t like the sound of that and never explored the aqueduct.

  Every ghost’s dreams had grown fearsome over the past months. Even the most beautiful memories, preserved for centuries, had turned dark and sour. He had come—the Horseman, the new dominant spirit—and their dreams had become a reflection of his own. The Horseman dreamt of helplessness and unutterable loss, of rage and indignation. He dreamt of a dark-haired woman, of a child, of a ship on a thundering ocean. He dreamt of his beheading at the broken bridge. He dreamt of retribution. His black dreams touched the sleep of the living; his pain rippled through the cemetery. This ancient city of ghosts—the Underhollow, some called it—spoiled at his touch, as if sown with dragon’s teeth. Even the trees of the forest spoiled. His dominance brought the blight, for the wailing of ghosts calls evil things to itself, and poisons all within its hearing.