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

by Gleaves, Richard

  The man finished searching the spill of trash, and reached for another bag.

  “Answer me,” said Zef, raising the silver sword. “Now.”

  Mather scowled. “Are you making threats?”

  “If I have to,” said Zef, but he stabbed the sword back into its scabbard.

  Mather sat on the hearth and crossed his legs, laying the wet umbrella across his knees, composing himself. “Your father is in possession of something… magical. Something that controls the Horseman.”

  “So you are after it. The Horseman’s Treasure.”

  Mather brightened. “You know of it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it in this house? What does it look like?”

  Zef hesitated. “What does Paul want it for? To use it?”

  “Of course not. But power like that can’t be left—lying around.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Paul wants it for himself, Hadewych had said. Like he wanted your mother. And you. He’s… not a good man.

  Mather scowled. “Tell me what you know.”

  Zef searched the man’s purple eyes. He could sense the lie there. Mather wanted the power of the reliquary. He was… salivating for it.

  Mather folded his arms. “Well?”

  Zef shrugged. “Dad found it in the Van Brunt tomb. They had a coffin exhumed—”

  “Yes. Last October. We know that much.”

  “The Treasure was inside. With the body of Absalom Crane.’

  “Yes. Yes. But how does it work?”

  “My ancestor Dylan wrote about it. You cut your hand, bleed on the Treasure, and say, ‘Rise headless and ride.’ You name a victim and the Horseman takes their head.”

  “Excellent. But what is it, exactly?”

  Zef dropped the scabbard at Mather’s feet. “It’s this sword.”

  The rain fell hard, like tears held back too long. Kate’s little light darted through the torrent, terrified and helpless. She couldn’t find Irving. She’d lost her poor Gunsmoke. Every ghost she passed rushed at her, trying to seize her. She had nowhere else to go. She found the vent above the receiving vault and flew down into the little marble chamber.

  “Eliza?” she called. “Are you here? I need you… I need someone… I don’t want to be a ghost anymore. I want to go home! Eliza? Where are you?”

  She glowed as brightly as she could manage, searching each burial niche.

  “Eliza?” she whispered. “… Grandma?”

  She waited, but no one answered.

  The receiving vault was empty.

  Eliza was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “The Appointed Hour”

  “We’re here,” said Joey.

  He turned Valerie’s BMW through the wrought-iron gate. Their headlights swept across the conservatory of Lyndhurst Manor. The great greenhouse had lost its glass and glory long ago. It loomed like the immense skeleton of Jonah’s whale, half protruding from the hillside, white ribs arcing through the sky, bloody with rust. Only a vine-choked trellis and a scattering of faded tea roses remained of the once-splendid gardens of Jay Gould. A series of wind chimes gonged and bonged in the rising wind, loud enough to be heard over the pattering of rain and the purr of Valerie’s car.

  Joey gripped the steering wheel. He bobbed his head in tandem with the windshield wipers. Side to side, the way Booger the wood turtle always did when deciding how to attack an earthworm. The cars in front of them crept along, splashing through growing puddles.

  LYNDHURST. TONIGHT. NINE P.M.

  LYNDHURST. TONIGHT. NINE P.M.

  The summons blared in Joey’s head, over and over.

  “We’ll be on time,” whispered Valerie. “It’s only eight forty.”

  “I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about getting back.”

  “I know.”

  “My mom’s going to wonder where I am. It wouldn’t actually take this long to drive you to White Plains and pick up Ladybug.”

  “We’ll tell her you got a flat.”

  “Yeah. Or the bug ran out of gas. Something. Let’s just get this thing done so I can get back and protect my dad.”

  The brake lights ahead dimmed and Joey pulled forward. The scowling man at the security kiosk wore the uniform of one of Usher’s goons under a dripping plastic rain parka.

  “Stones?” the guard muttered.

  Valerie produced a Styrofoam cup and showed him the anichitis inside.

  “One stone per person,” the man said.

  “Oh.” Joey fished in his suit pockets, pulling out cough drops and house keys and a wadded twenty and his wallet and a pitch pipe and his iPhone and a tangle of headphone cords and a scattering of change. “Crap. I left mine in the chapel.”

  The man sighed. “Name?”

  “Joey Osorio.”

  He checked his list. “All right. You’re lucky Mr. Mather knows you. They’ll confirm you at the house. Go on.”

  Joey rolled up his window and they crawled forward.

  “They shouldn’t keep—lists of Gifted people,” huffed Valerie. “What if it—got into the wrong hands?”

  “Well, we know who’s behind this at least,” said Joey.

  “Was there any doubt?”

  A nugget of hail struck the hood of the car and bounced off.

  “Better not dent me,” whispered Valerie, frowning at the sky.

  Another nugget struck, big as a lump of packing popcorn, as if to say, I’ll do what I want.

  “There it is.” Joey had caught his first glimpse of the marble mass of Lyndhurst, the four-story main tower peeping over the shifting trees, like a marble crown floating above the head of the linden groves.

  The groves that gave the manor its name were as disturbing as the manor itself. They reminded Joey of the tormented hemlocks of Section 77. The trees bent like umbrellas, with gnarled trunks at center and spokes of twisted lightning-bolt branches. The branches made shaggy domes like Indian burial mounds, green hillocks with secret hollows beneath. The umbrellas pulsed with the wind, as if to turn inside out and expose the burials inside.

  I must be nervous, Joey thought. I’m totally mixing metaphors.

  Valerie put her cup-o’-stone on the dash, raised a hand, and screwed up her face. She was trying to move it. Nothing happened. “Damn.”

  “What?” said Joey.

  “I didn’t want to—worry you, but we won’t—have our Gifts tonight.”

  “Why not?”

  She pointed at a passing grove. “The linden is a sacred Celtic tree. Basswood. Lime tree. Easy to enchant.”

  “You’re bullshitting me.”

  Valerie looked offended. “Actually, I’m not.”

  “Sorry. I can never tell these days.”

  “Jay Gould used these—to protect his home from witches. They say he was paranoid. Personally, I think someone in his family—had a Gift—and this was how he kept his children—from cursing each other.”

  “So everyone’s powerless tonight.”

  “There are ways to get around—a Dead Zone. The Appointed have the grimoires, and a few Deep Witches on payroll. I promise you—Mather’s people will have their Gifts.”

  “Great. So we’re walking into a trap.”

  “Probably. But we have to answer the summons.”

  The BMW rounded a particularly evil-looking linden grove, and Joey hit the brakes. Figures stood on the hill, very near the car. Scarecrows—hundreds of them, lining both sides of the road. They hung like corpses on crosses, impaled there to ward off travelers. A twisting sign read: SCARECROW INVASION! It was an annual project. Joey had made a scarecrow here himself, back in middle school—the classic Oz scarecrow (though wearing Dorothy’s slippers). Friendly and cheerful. Not like these. No. Not like these at all. Joey wished the traffic would move faster, because these child-concocted monsters were watching him.

  Kids today are messed up.

  Some scarecrows were gore-soaked and trailed eyeballs. One had sad goo-goo-doll eyes. One had a cow
’s head. Some were impaled wig dummies—with blank eyes and painted scarlet lips. Some wore masks—Carnivale, cat’s-eye, Spongebob, Leatherface, Darth Vader. Some had plastic monster hands or extra spider arms. Their bodies flapped in the wind—soggy sweaters and Goodwill rags, trash bags for bellies and broken high heels for feet. One scarecrow wore a business suit and a hardhat and carried a bloody axe. They passed a maniacal Batman with too much lipstick, a clown with a sequined eye, a sad rainbow-haired angel with gossamer wings, and a scarecrow in a bib sucking a pacifier. As Joey looked on, Batman’s head blew off, reaped by the wind. It rolled into the dark hollow of a linden grove to stare at the passing BMW from a patch of mud.

  “I don’t like them either,” said Valerie, raising a hand to block the figures from her sight.

  The scarecrows weren’t nearly as frightening as the house itself. What had Joey called it once? “Quasimodo’s summer place”? It was apt. Lyndhurst Manor looked cribbed together from bits of unrelated cathedrals. In daylight, the effect was a little comical. You could point to the marble building and say, “Wow. That is nuts.” But at night, Lyndhurst struck you the same way the linden groves did. You felt that something lurked inside.

  The black mass of the house grew larger. Joey’s headlights splashed white marble across Lyndhurst’s cheeks. Lightning struck the Hudson, just behind the house and the stab of light glittered the gothic-peaked windows. He felt caught by those glowing eyes.

  “Welcome to Amityville,” he whispered.

  “I was thinking something similar.” Valerie’s voice dropped to nothing. “‘Silence lay steadily—against the wood and stone—of Hill House—’”

  They finished the quote together. “‘—and whatever walked there, walked alone.’”

  Joey suppressed a full-body shiver.

  They parked the BMW and got out, shielding their heads. Valerie opened their only umbrella. They huddled together as they fell in with a small group of strangers, all adults, no one under sixteen.

  “Is everyone here Gifted?” Joey asked.

  “Shh,” said Valerie.

  A square-faced man with black hair passed by, his collar turned up. “Anyone know what this is about?”

  Joey shrugged, afraid to speak to anyone.

  The group gathered at the front of the house beneath the porte-cochère. There was no light, and everyone kept their backs turned to one another, trying not to be seen (or not to see). They were admitted one at a time into the glass-enclosed vestibule. Joey couldn’t see through the condensation. He half-expected a sudden splash of blood on the glass, from someone who had failed whatever test awaited within.

  He entered to face two small desks. Jessica sat at one, Mather at the other. They waved him in at once, dismissively, and he trailed rainwater through the glass vestibule and into the main house.

  Bent-Ear Man stamped Joey’s hand and slapped a sticker to his chest:

  “What, no cover charge?” said Joey.

  “Funny guy,” said Brian. He smiled though. They were old friends by now. “Would you like a mask, Nine?” He offered the bird-nosed mask worn by medieval plague doctors.

  “Uh, no thanks.”

  Joey strode into the Lyndhurst entry hall and his jaw dropped.

  “You have got to be kidding.”

  He’d visited Lyndhurst with school and had sung a Christmas concert here once, so he’d expected what he’d seen before: a mansion of gothic marble and twisted sconces, heavy mahogany furniture and elaborate fireplaces. Spooky enough on a normal day. But October had come, and now the place was done up for Halloween as well. A big sign in orange and black stood on a tripod. He read the words mentally in a sepulchral Transylvanian accent: Welcome to Jay Gould’s House of Curiosities. The entry hall dripped with black shrouds and spider webs. Artificial candles flickered in the crystal fixtures above. Bouquets of black flowers and funeral lilies drooped from every vase. Blue pin spots shined in the faces of two formidable busts at the far end: George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette.

  Joey walked between the two ghostly heads and felt his way into the dark reception hall. A black coffin sat at center, lid raised to reveal something sleeping inside. He backed away and bumped into the mannequin of a witch. Her face was evil, framed by long white hair. Her hands were raised as if to conjure a spell, and her fingernails were pointed and dangerous-looking. She appeared to float, with no visible support.

  A hand fell on Joey’s shoulder, and he jumped.

  “Wrong way, Nine,” said Brian, pointing.

  Joey padded through darkness and found the drawing room, more brightly lit though still dim. It had also been done up for Halloween. The decorator had apparently been going for something like Arsenic and Old Lace meets The Bride of Frankenstein. Withered yellow lace hung at all the windows and made a canopy at one end of the room. The Bride herself stood at the raised altar, her high hair rippled with white, posing like a pop diva turned to stone by Medusa. A skeleton knelt at her feet, raising black roses. A vampire minister and four mannequin bridesmaids completed the tableau.

  The room had living occupants as well, scarier than the mannequin bridal party. About a dozen people sat huddled in shadow, some in chairs, some on the blue carpet. They turned their beak-nosed plague masks in Joey’s direction as he entered, and he felt very exposed suddenly.

  So these were the Gifted of Sleepy Hollow.

  Joey gave a little nod and kept near the wall. They looked away, their curiosity satisfied. He tried to guess their identities. A few had removed their masks. None of them looked familiar. Except… that elderly African-American woman—didn’t she man the counter at Ichabod’s newsstand on Wildey Street? And that hot blond guy with the crew cut… didn’t he work as a groundskeeper at Kykuit? Martin something. Joey buried the guy’s granddad back in freshman year. And that one—a cater waiter? Yeah. From the Stone Barns party. It was weird, thinking that all his life a scattering of his neighbors—strangers—had magical powers. He wondered what each could do. He felt a little disappointed that there were no grand revelations.

  And then there was one.

  One of the bird-nosed Gifted let out a squeal and approached.

  She wore a man’s dress shirt and black dance leggings, a Gilligan hat atop flame-red hair, and Greek comedy/tragedy masks for earrings.

  Oh. My. Sondheim, Joey thought. Please no.

  “Get out of town,” the girl whispered, and ripped off her disguise.

  “Lisa?”

  Lisa Mayfair squeaked again. “I knew it! I knew it! As soon as I heard about your coma. I knew. You’re a Founder, right? Oh. My. Gah. I just knew! My Hamlet has a Gift! Hey, everyone! My best friend has a Gift!”

  A masked man stood. Number Four. He wore a red baseball cap atop his beaked face. “Shut the hell up! What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Frankie says relax, butterball. No one’s getting cursed. Haven’t you figured that out yet? We’re all family here.”

  “Damn it,” the man muttered, sitting again with arms folded. “Keep your mouth shut.”

  Joey winced. That was the worst thing to say to Lisa. It only encouraged her.

  She grabbed Joey’s arm and held it high, like a referee declaring a winner. “We are out and proud witches, Miss Thing.”

  Joey pulled away, retreated into a corner, and sat on a white-draped sofa spattered with fake blood. “I think it’s better if we don’t talk.” He searched the room for Valerie, wishing they hadn’t been separated.

  “Forget that closet case,” Lisa whispered, joining him. “I’m so excited! What can you do? Is it a singer’s Gift? An actor’s Gift?”

  “Do you mind?” Joey said, scooting away. “I’m kind of uncomfortable. I need to know what’s going on.”

  She scooted closer. “You got a rock, right? This is so amazing!” She put an arm across Joey’s shoulders and swayed, singing “Magic to Do” from Pippin. She had just forced Joey to raise jazz hands when Zef appeared at the door, a plague mask dangling fr
om his fingers. His badge read Six.

  Joey shot to his feet and bounded across the room as if dodging a falling chandelier. He whispered to Zef, “Oh my God. Save me.”

  Zef looked over Joey’s shoulder. “Is that—”

  “Lisa from drama class. I can’t deal with her right now. Where have you been?” He noticed Zef’s exhausted expression. “What’s happened?”

  “It’s been a long day. We need to talk. I—went to see my father.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know. I thought… someone had to confront him. And, man… I’ve got news. Kate’s at Gory Brook.”

  “You found her? She’s okay?”

  “Yes and no. She’s alive but… she’s possessed by Agathe.”

  “Possessed? Like…”

  “Like Agathe is controlling her body.”

  “Holy shit. Valerie was right.”

  “Valerie?”

  “She thought Agathe had… come through somehow. That she’s doing all that crazy spell stuff. The graffiti. So she’s inside Kate? Damn it. What do we do? Can we help her?”

  “There’s more.” Zef took a deep breath. “Jason’s alive.”

  Joey started to tremble. “For sure? Is he with you?”

  “No. My dad’s got him locked in the lighthouse, I think.”

  “The lighthouse!” Joey backed away, balling fists. If not for the dead zone, he would have opened up a volcano and surfed lava. “Damn him. Just—oh, that son of a bitch.”

  Lisa appeared at Joey’s elbow. “Who’s a son of a bitch?”

  “Excuse us,” said Joey, annoyed.

  “Holy Hello, Dolly!” she bubbled. “You’re mascot Zef. Joey’s been crushing on you forever.”

  “Lisa! Please!” Joey whirled on her. “Get the hell away from me, okay?”

  “What did I do?” She covered her mouth. “Am I being brassy?”

  “You’re being obnoxious. I’ve got serious shit to deal with right now involving my actual best friend who’s in real trouble.”

  She scowled. “Jason.”

  “Yeah. Jason. Who’s not a lunatic. Much. Now back off.”