“Oh, Dad…”
Hadewych hugged Zef’s neck, knees sagging. “Look at how much pain I’ve been in.”
They sank to the floor together. Zef felt as though they were sinking under rolling waves, as if his father were a drowning man, dragged down by some inexorable undertow, and he…
He was the life preserver.
“I’ll help you clean it up, Dad. Come on. Come on, soldier. I’ll help you clean it up.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“The Water Bearers”
Kate slept through the day in the tomb beneath the altar of the Old Dutch Church, among the dust of the ancient dead. She dreamt of Jason, of the night she first met him, the night of the Spirit Dance. They moved together on the dance floor, two spirits mingling. His hand drifted to her back. His palm pressed her skin. Energy rose within her, escaping into his touch. Each borrowed the other’s Gift. Jason looked into her future… She looked into his past…
The pleasure of their joining intensified. But Jason was taking too much. She struggled in his grip. No! No! She was going dark inside. Empty. The doors of the gym flew open and the Horseman rode in. Not Zef in his mascot costume. The real monster of flesh and blood and ragged breath. He rode Gunsmoke, Kate’s rose-grey horse. But Gunsmoke was dead. A galloping skeleton with red eyes. The music changed to thundering organ chords. Kate panicked, pushed Jason away. He fell to the floor, reaching for her.
And the Horseman took his head.
Kate woke with the arrival of sunset, glad to escape the dream.
She slipped through a chink in the fieldstones, rose from beneath the church, and crossed the burying ground, ignored by the few dead who had risen there—vacant-eyed spinsters in Dutch dress, a soldier with one arm, an elderly crone who had climbed an elm tree to sit among the spider webs, gazing through the twilight mists at the floating orb of the moon.
She drifted up the hill, to Irving’s grave. He waited for her there. She gave a little curtsey and together they ambled into the deepening dusk.
“How did your mission go?” Kate asked.
“Not well, I’m afraid. The ghosts of Valhalla Cemetery have refused to assist us.”
“But why? My mom’s there, and Jason’s parents. Did you see them?”
“No. This was a parley, and none of them are the dominant spirit.”
“Who is?”
“Ayn Rand. And she told me in no uncertain terms that the ghosts of Valhalla have no moral obligation to sacrifice their peaceful existence simply because we request it.”
“What did you say?”
“What could I? Rachmaninoff agreed with her, and then the conversation digressed into a critique of my literary style.” Irving sighed. “She’s right, I suppose. Not about my style, of course, which is exemplary. But the Horseman is Sleepy Hollow’s problem to solve, not Valhalla’s.”
“So there goes our army. Any other cemeteries we could contact?”
“Only tiny little ones. None with enough spirits to defy this lot.” He gestured to the passing platoons of headstones. A few risen ghosts sneered at them as they passed. “What I wouldn’t give to have General Washington buried nearby. He would wage a campaign to remember.”
“You knew George Washington?” she asked.
“Of course not,” Irving said. “How old do you think I am? I’m only… two hundred and twenty.” He winked. “Yet I suppose I did know him, in a sense. The general was present always, in my life. I am named for him, after all.”
“I was going to ask.”
“The week I was born, New York City received news of the Continental victory at Yorktown, ending our revolution favorably. At my christening the next day, my mother named me ‘Washington’ in commemoration, though she might have named me ‘George’ just as plausibly.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“I did. Just once.” His steps slowed, as if he was matching them to some music in the distance, some fife and drum beyond the cicada song. “I was six years old, and my country was reinventing itself. We had a new constitution. Congress had designated my Gotham to be the temporary seat of a new American government. General Washington rode into New York to be sworn in as president, down at Federal Hall. You cannot imagine the spectacle. Cannon and fireworks. I was quite dazzled.
“Afterward, our new president lived on Cherry Street, not far from my father’s home. I had a nanny, a Scots girl named Lizzie. She and I… stalked the great man. Every time he passed on horseback, she would lift me onto her shoulders and dangle me in his direction. Finally, her perseverance was rewarded—she managed to corner the president inside a tobacco shop. ‘Please, Your Honor!’ she cried, in that thick Scots burr of hers, ‘Here’s a bairn named after you!’ Do you know why Washington was a great general, Miss Kate?”
“No.”
“He knew how to escape when cornered. But there was no escaping Lizzie. He towered above me. I was only six, in my blue suit and ruffles, looking up at a living monument. But he smiled, without showing his teeth, of course. He bent to me. ‘What are you called?’ ‘Washington, sir. Washington Irving.’ He touched my shoulder and whispered something in my ear.”
“What?”
“I’ve no idea. I was terrified. He laid his right hand upon my head. Just here.” He pointed. “I can still feel his touch, gentle, as a father should bless a son. Lizzie prodded me to bow, and when I raised my head again, he was gone. My own father chided me, that night, for not remembering what the general had whispered. I became so embarrassed that I lied—no cherry-tree chopper, I—and told my parents that Washington had predicted my future greatness. I almost believed it myself.
“That night, Lizzie read to me, and the tales of Sinbad and Robinson Crusoe seemed more real than they had ever done before. I went to sleep, my head filled with curious imaginings and with the blessing of a president lingering on my forehead.”
Kate and Irving had reached the cemetery bridge, the faux-rustic span between the old grounds and the modern section. The Pocantico splashed beneath it, like the distant applause of a great man’s inauguration.
Irving paused before crossing the bridge. “Washington was the very bookmark in the tale of my life, marking all my best passages. I died gazing at a watercolor I had painted, depicting the day in the tobacco shop. It hung in my bedroom at Sunnyside. My last work—the crowning achievement of my life, so I thought—was a biography of the general, in five volumes. And yet, after all this river of time…” He sighed, looking at the hills of Sleepy Hollow. “What is Almost-George Irving best known for? A brevity. My poor Legend. I wrote it in a weekend while visiting my brother in England, out of homesickness for these glorious hills I had so loved as a boy. And here I am, a ghost of the Hollow, and a general myself, a fallen general of the dead. Do you suppose my power will end entirely if I cross this bridge, Miss Kate? Might I turn into a flaming skeleton and bound over the treetops, disappearing in a clap of thunder and lightning?” He cheerfully strolled to the opposite shore, turned back, and shrugged. “Apparently not.”
“Why can’t the Horseman cross?” Kate asked, following. “I’ve always wondered.”
Irving shrugged. “Because it makes for a good climax, of course.” He beckoned. She joined him, and they passed into the modern part of the cemetery.
“So!” said Irving. “No army, but let us try to win an ally at least. Are we almost to your friend’s grave?”
Kate blinked. “Eliza was buried in the Palmyra section. I attended her funeral. I’ll recognize the spot.”
“Oh, I know the way to Palmyra, traveler,” Irving said, with a smile. “An oasis city—the city of palms—at the intersection of the caravan roads, between the Euphrates and the Orontes, between Lebanon and Jabel Bishri. A place of rest for the weary nomad. King Solomon built Tadmor, the city of palms, where…” Irving went silent. He stopped, turned, and searched the grave-dotted hillside.
“What is it?” said Kate.
“He’s very near.”
; Kate circled Irving’s shoulders. “The Horseman?”
“We should make haste. We’re defying his mistress, or we intend to. The old witch will not suffer our meddling.”
They hurried on. Cutting across the graves. The red vigil lights had lit. The gloom closed in and the ground fog thickened. Kate recognized the birch tree and spindled off in that direction.
“I found her,” she said, circling a headstone.
ELIZA MERRICK
Beloved Mother and Grandmother
Irving neared, stirring the mist. “The ground’s been salted. That’s what binds her.”
“Can we undo it?”
“We must water the grave.” He searched the skies. “When did it rain last?”
“It hasn’t raised for months.”
“Not since this spell was cast, at least.”
“It’s been dry all year. They say it’s global warming.”
Irving frowned. “Do you mean summer?”
“Never mind.”
“We shall make it rain ourselves, then. Look for a water-skin of some kind. We’ll carry it up from the stream.”
Kate found an empty fertilizer bag wadded in the back of a parked maintenance cart. Irving took it in hand and carried it down the steep plunge of bramble-choked bushes between Eliza’s grave and the Pocantico. He passed through moonlight on his way, and disappeared. It looked as if the bag had caught an errant breeze, or that an errant breeze had caught the bag.
“Can I help?” said Kate.
“You’re hardly strong enough. Few ghosts are.” Irving held the bag just above the bubbling current, hesitating.
“What’s wrong?”
“These are powerful waters, the very seam between the fabric of the living and the dead, more shoddily patched in Sleepy Hollow than almost anywhere else in the country.”
“Huh?”
Irving chuckled. “Dear girl, did you imagine that the whole globe teems with ghosts as powerful as we here? No. This river is infused with magic. It trickles into our graves and makes us as we are. Few such founts remain in our modern world, and no other, at least that I am aware of, passes through a cemetery. Sleepy Hollow is a peculiarly haunted place. But… come. Your friend suffers…” He dipped the bag into the current, filling it. He raised the fat water-bag with effort and heaved it up the slope. “I’ve become a camel,” Irving whispered, nearing Eliza’s grave, “crossing the Syrian desert, bringing water to Palmyra.”
But the bag slipped from his hands, flattening, spilling its contents down the hill, away from the salted earth.
“What happened?” said Kate.
“I’m not a camel,” said Irving. “I’m a fool. I cannot carry over a salted threshold.”
“Like a manifest,” Kate said, remembering her adventure with Jason in the stables. “They can’t maintain their bodies.”
“I will attempt it again, and approach from above.”
He took up the bag, returned to the Pocantico, and carried another skin of water up the hill. This time he circled the salted patch, gaining the slope above Eliza’s grave, and let the water spill. The flow broke to either side of her headstone, missing the salt completely
Kate stared at the grave, thinking of salt, of Jason, of the stables… of…
“I have an idea,” she whispered. “I’ll be right back. Wait for me!” She darted up the hill, threaded the chain link, and flew north, up the aqueduct trail.
“Did it make you feel like a big man?”
Eddie stood on the broken abutment of the old bridge in the woods, watching the twilight stir the waters. Brambles and nettles clutched at him, and so did Zef’s words. They stung. Probably because they were true. Killing those people at homecoming had made Eddie feel big. Big and powerful. He’d had a blast, chopping off heads and arms—watching people scream and run. It had been like his Horseman dreams—the dreams of the battlefield. He’d been given a mission, and the mission was the only thing that mattered. He’d done his job, and he’d gone home.
He’d felt like a big man, yeah.
Until he got shot by his dad.
Eddie’s fingers went to the place where the wound had been.
Bang!
He could still feel his guts flying out the back. If he’d been normal, a shot like that would have killed him. But he’d never be normal again. And he was just starting to get that fact into his head. Never is a long time. He would never die, according to Agathe. Not while the Horseman was inside. He could get stabbed through the heart and it would just heal itself, like his shoulder healed after the Crane kid stabbed him. He was mighty. He was impervious. He was the Terminator.
He wasn’t normal.
But who wanted to be normal, anyhow? Eddie’d worked for years to be superhuman, to be bigger, stronger, bulkier, a better thrower, a better monster. This was just another stage in his personal evolution, right?
He sat and hung his legs over the crumbling edge. He came to the broken bridge a lot. He felt drawn to the place, to the place where he had died. Where the Horseman had. (“I have held the bridge!”) A leaf circled the spot below, like a little boat in a lagoon of stars. That’s where his head got cut off…
Eddie tensed.
He saw her there, looking up at him. The dark-haired chick who’d haunted his dreams these past weeks. She beckoned to him from the waters, arms outstretched. He’d seen her many times. He’d felt her sleeping beside him in bed, seen her staring at him from windows, or here, reaching to him from the water.
But whenever he chased after her, she vanished.
Her dark hair billowed around her face, like the water whipping around one of the boulders. She drifted away. He stood, compelled to chase after. She rose from the water and stood on the opposite shore, beckoning, beckoning. He had to go to her. He could jump the distance. Yeah. He could jump the span of the broken bridge, no problem. He took a few steps back and got a running start. He dug his shoes in, hit the edge, and jumped.
Halfway across, in midair, he struck something invisible, some barrier. He lost momentum, arced back, and fell hard into the river.
What the hell was that?
He swept water off his face and pulled himself back to shore. He felt weak and drained, like he’d just played a hard game and needed to sleep. He fell onto his back, one arm across his eyes, and saw the dark-haired chick again on the inside of his eyelids. She was about thirty. Incredible body, green eyes. She lay next to him, her fingers twirling his chest hair. She kissed him hard and whispered something he didn’t understand, like in a foreign language.
Eddie brought his arm down and blinked. Damn it. The stupid daydream left him drained and unfulfilled. The bitch always did that to him. Sometimes they would be in bed together like that, sometimes they’d be walking in the woods together or kneeling in some church. Who was she? He’d never met her. He would have remembered. He thought maybe she was someone the Horseman had nailed. Good for the Horseman. Eddie hadn’t been with anybody in forever. He kept expecting Agathe to jump his bones, but she never did, and he never had the guts to try and force her. He needed some fun, and the dark-haired girl felt like a taunt, a tease.
He sat up again. Why the hell hadn’t he made that easy jump? It made him feel… impotent. Like the bridge was laughing at him, like the opposite shore was laughing at him. He stood, dripping, and climbed back up onto the broken abutment.
The wound in his side ached.
I’m never going to die, Eddie thought.
He picked up a stone and threw it across the gap. It clattered onto the opposite shore. There was nothing there—no wall, no reason he couldn’t get across. He stepped back, ran for the edge, and jumped again. His body struck that same invisible barrier. He hit the water headfirst this time, which pissed him off. He dragged himself out, shivering and angry.
He had to cross that bridge. Crossing that bridge was the only thing that mattered. Nothing else existed for him. Cross the bridge. Cross the bridge. Cross the bridge. He twisted water from his s
hirt, wiped his wet cheeks, and threw himself at the far shore again…
… and again…
… and again…
… and again.
Kate didn’t recognize any of the other horses in the old stable. The brown pony that had occupied ‘C’ stall was gone. The black stallion, Daredevil, had died in the snow at Stone Barns. She didn’t know the white and brown calico or the mare with pink eyes. But she knew the horse in ‘A’ stall. Knew him and loved him. Kate’s rose-grey Gunsmoke glowed white in a square of moon-shimmer, a ghost-horse for a ghost-girl.
Kate fluttered near to him and whispered, “Baby?”
His ears flicked forward as if he’d heard.
“Baby, it’s me.”
Gunsmoke took a step backward. He’d seen her. He gave a little whinny of recognition, just as he used to when she came to groom him or walk him. His mouth quieted, his tail swished gently. She knew his face as well as she had known her own. Yeah, he’d seen her. And he was… happy.
She circled his snout, then ran along it until she could see her own light winking in Gunsmoke’s left eye. “You want to go riding, baby?”
Gunsmoke blinked. One hoof tapped the ground.
“I need you for a big important mission, okay? Gunsmoke to the rescue!”
Another snort.
“Okay, boy! Okay! Let’s go go go!”
Kate dipped, getting beneath the enormous latch of the stall. She’d never attempted to move an object before. She felt it quiver… it was so big, so impossible…
Gunsmoke reared and kicked the door, breaking the latch off.
“Good boy! Now easy… easy…”
But Gunsmoke didn’t want “easy.” He’d missed her, and he wanted to run. He bolted straight at Kate, and…
… she slipped inside him.
She slipped inside without even trying. She could feel herself bonding with the horse, breathing with him. It didn’t surprise her. It felt natural. It wasn’t possession, it was… symbiosis. She looked out through his eyes and saw the ground flying past. They were running! Oh, she would cry if she could. It was like her feet were on the ground again, back on terra firma, and she was ripping up the dirt, riding with her baby with nothing but open road. They jumped the fence at the far end of the property. Kate let out a whoop and heard a whinny of delight emerge from her own throat. She and Gunsmoke were one, galloping down the aqueduct trail. The ruts ahead rose and fell, her hooves churned the earth. The branches rushed by, the clouds drifted, the moon stayed fixed. The sound of her hooves matched the beating of her heart. She felt alive again, in a body again. She felt joy as she hadn’t felt in months. Joy and the exhilaration of action, movement, and purpose.
SLEEPY HOLLOW: General of the Dead (Jason Crane Book 3) Page 35
