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

by Gleaves, Richard

  “Aye, and she’ll have your eyes if you come closer,” I replied.

  I tried to cast a spell, but no words entered my mind. My spells had fled my memory. Grenauld closed the distance, took my wrists, and threw me to the floor. He produced his rusty chain and let it swing, striking the wall above my head. I crouched, shielding my face. He swung again and struck my elbow, sending terrible pain up my arm. I cried for help. His hand covered my mouth and he wrestled me into my sleeping niche. I struggled. He dropped the chain and withdrew a hand scythe from his pocket. He held it to my throat.

  “I’ve never had a witch before.”

  His hand left my mouth to fumble with my laces. I turned away, flushing with shame. I spotted the right eye of my horseman, watching the scene through the carved eye of the pumpkin. But this was no dead gaze.

  The eye moved.

  Help me, I cried silently. Help me. Defend me. Save me.

  Grenauld held his scythe to the artery of my neck and pinned me down, taunting me.

  “What are you going to do now? What are you going to do now? Hm? What are you going to do now?”

  That is when the words came. All my spells, all at once. They gushed from me, strings of incantations, as if the Hollow had chosen me for its instrument, to be the voice of every leaf and chittering insect, every splash of the brook, every groan of the millwheel. Fireflies appeared, twinkling at the windows. I recited alien words, words Hulda hadn’t taught me. French, Italian, the patois of the slaves and the argot of the sailors, the slang of the Post Road and the lost prayers of the Alipconk natives. Some font of magic broke in me as never before, as if my artery had been pierced and magic now splashed the air. I fell back, exhausted, and whispered, “Oh, my horseman. Rise headless and ride.”

  Behind Grenauld, the pumpkin burst into flame.

  Fire poured from its eyes and mouth. A column of black smoke struck the ceiling. The pumpkin cooked, bringing the aroma of pies. A blotch appeared on its forehead, sinking in. The blackness spread, writhing across its orange cheeks, melting its flesh. Something began to laugh, hard and brittle as a hatchet chopping wood.

  “What are you doing?” Grenauld stammered, with a look of superstitious fear.

  I honestly did not know. The pumpkin flesh charred and fell away, exposing the lantern, perched on its stool and glowing like a star. The horseman’s eyes fixed to mine. I felt his question.

  My horseman wanted a mission.

  He wanted a name.

  I smiled. “Jalen Grenauld.”

  The head smiled in return. Grenauld’s hands left me and he straightened. His eyes went blank, as the horseman’s soul took possession of his body.

  “Ergeben,” the horseman whispered, with Grenauld’s voice.

  Then Grenauld raised his hand scythe and, with one swift jerk, decapitated himself.

  September 1st, 1849

  I laughed as I ran through the twilight woods, the dark lantern wrapped in my arms. I felt powerful and loved. The head is the lantern of the soul, I thought. My horseman does not rot in an unmarked grave. His soul lies here, gathered to my heart. He rescued me. He loves me, as I love him. I would not bury him in the churchyard, I would keep him forever. He would be my defender.

  I splashed happily through the Gory Brook and bent to inhale the perfume of Mother Hulda’s garden.

  A dead man stared up from the herbs. Two dead men. Four. Both banks of the Gory Brook were strewn with corpses, a dozen on each side, bleeding in the waters. William Crane had fought his battle in the witch’s garden.

  I called for Mother Hulda. The hut was empty. I followed a trail of blood and found Mother Hulda among the dead. The old witch lay face-down as if to guzzle the water of the Gory Brook, not far from where I’d met her, where she’d slapped the magic water from my hands. I turned her over with my foot. Her eyes were sunken in. Her bonnet lay nearby, black with blood. The old witch bore a gunshot wound in her chest. A trail of flattened weeds marked her passage from the hovel to this gully, as if she’d dragged herself to die in this spot, intentionally adding her blood to the spill.

  I could not weep for her. The coldness inside me as I gloated over Miracle’s pain had spread as I’d laughed over Grenauld’s corpse. I felt filled with icy pond-water. I sighed, stepped over her body, and went into the hut.

  I slept for a few hours in Hulda’s nest, my arms around the lantern. I dreamt of my Slough of Despond, of leeches that drank forever and could not be removed. My mother stood in the slough. She gestured to her own green bones, protruding from the mire, and said, “That could be you, someday, if you only tried.”

  When I woke, I wept. I knew I must flee Tarrytown, and yet I could not walk the refugee path with an enchanted head in tow. I would have to bury my horseman and return for him another day.

  At first light, I dragged Mother Hulda inside and laid her in her nest. I tied her bonnet-ribbons under her chin. I searched out my oyster-shell knife, my mother’s book, Father’s bleeding bowl and shaving kit. I knelt in the garden, removed my horseman from the lantern, and propped him in the bleeding bowl. I soaped his face, adding water from the brook, whipping up a pink froth. I shaved him, careful not to nick. I did a good job. Papa would have been proud.

  I tucked a sprig of purple hyssop behind his ear and kissed my horseman. I kissed him full on the lips, pretending it was real, fighting my desperate disappointment, attempting to deceive myself into believing I’d achieved my satisfaction. Yet where I hoped to find heat, I found only the cold and passive flesh of death. Yet no other man would do. I must have this man or none other. I grew wild, kissing him over and over, crying, “Wake to me, my horseman!” I would be the prince and he the Sleeping Beauty—pricked by a spinning wheel, yet revived by the kiss of true love.

  I forced his eyelids open.

  “Rise headless and ride,” I whispered, but he did not answer. Tears broke down my cheeks. “Wake to me, and I shall stay with you. Ergeben, my horseman. Ergeben. I surrender. I love you.”

  My pain became anger.

  “I am burning for you! I am burning! Oh, please kiss me!”

  He looked up at me with sudden animation, and my hands erupted into flame. I screamed and dropped the head. Flame poured from me, blackening the garden. I flung myself at the Gory Brook, plunging my hands into the bloody water. I only burned brighter.

  I calmed and gazed with wonder upon this new gift. The flames pulsed with the beating of my heart, as my leeches had done. Yet I felt no pain, as I had felt none in the burning cabin, the night my parents died. I pressed a fiery hand to the body of a fallen colonial soldier and watched him char, bringing a sweet scent. Had I not wished to burn those soldiers as they’d burned my mother? Now I could. I could burn them all. I could burn anyone I liked. Or disliked. This was power, the very opposite of helplessness, and I loved it. The soldier crumbled into ash. I calmed, and the flames winked away.

  I spun, looking for my horseman’s head.

  Oh, I had scorched it.

  “I don’t need you,” I said, looking into his once-again-vacant eyes. “Nor anyone else. I have power of my own, head. Serve me or refuse me. I care not. Whatever you are, however I have bound you, you are mine.” I shoved the thing back into its lantern and carried it into the hut.

  I pushed aside the hearthstone and found Mother Hulda’s grimoire. That was good. Knowledge is power. I found a knotted napkin full of gold. That was good. Money is power. I lowered the lantern into the dark space beneath the hearth.

  “This is your last chance,” I sneered. “Wake to me now, and swear your love, or rot until I have use for you.”

  The head remained mute. I spat at it, whispered apologies, then pressed my lips to the lantern’s glass one final time. I sealed his little tomb, reluctantly. The cinders had spilled, revealing the circle and star. I rose to my knees, produced my oyster-shell knife, and slashed my palm. I pressed my blood to the symbol.

  “And you, whatever you are. Schacath the Red, Schacath the Demon, the fi
rst fear, Him Him Him Him. Father of witches, husband of witches. I will give you my blood, if you like. Bleeding cures all ills, does it not? I will give you all the blood you want. I will bleed men and women like sacrificial animals. I will be your leech on the skin of the world. I deny my baptism, I deny my God, I deny my parents and my birth. I shall be Agathe Van Ripper no longer. I shall be Agathe the Witch. Your daughter, your wife. Only give me power. Power beyond knowledge, power beyond wealth. Give me magic, magic enough to raise my horseman from the dead, and you may have my eternal soul.”

  No satanic voice whispered its acceptance. The ground did not open. No angels wept. I stood, turned, and watched with horror as Mother Hulda sat up in her nest. The corpse turned its head slowly and widened its evil eye. She raised a bony finger and hissed:

  Durch dein Blut! Ein Nekromant geboren ist!

  By thy blood! A Necromancer shall be born!

  “Shall… I… be this necromancer?”

  The dead witch broke into ghastly peals of laughter.

  “Tell me!” I shouted. “If I spill enough blood, could I raise the dead? Could my love return to me?”

  Her laughter intensified until she became a mad thing. I could not bear the sound. I backed away, horror-struck, and extended my hands. I set the old witch on fire, as Hansel and Gretel had done. Yet she went on laughing, laughing, endlessly laughing at me, even as her gingerbread house went up in flames. I fed the blaze, backing through the door, burning the fetishes and thatch, bringing it all down to bury my horseman beneath.

  I stood by the bonfire, listening to the dead woman cackle and crackle.

  A deadly calm came over me. I could see my destiny in those flames. I would live to see Hulda’s prophecy fulfilled. I would be a necromancer—one who resurrects the dead. I would raise my lover from his grave and I would know his kiss.

  “Rest now, meine Schwester-Hexe,” I sang to her. “Go to sleep, my sister-witch.”

  I took my knife, cut my long hair, and threw it into the fire. I stripped the smallest Hessian soldier and pulled his uniform on. I hesitated, about to throw Pilgrim’s Progress into the blaze, but put it in my pocket instead. I tucked the bleeding bowl under my arm and, weeping, walked into the dawn. I had no breadcrumbs to guide my pilgrimage. I only knew that to the east lay the armies of General Howe.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  “Agathe’s Tale ~ Part Seven”

  September 5th, 1849

  I did not return to Tarrytown for seven years. When I did, in 1784, I was a married woman: Agathe Van Brunt, wife of Hermanus Van Brunt, a loyalist Dutchman who administered the East Ward of Lower Manhattan during General Howe’s occupation of New York. I did not marry for love. I loved my horseman and none other. I chose the Van Brunt family for their excellent social standing and ancient lineage. I chose Hermanus for his wealth, for he had seemed a lordling when I first met him.

  General Howe had foolishly declared victory over Washington and had returned to New York for the winter, giving no pursuit. He called for a spree of merrymaking in the occupied city, which was then under martial law. With Hulda’s gold, I bought myself a silk dress and insinuated myself into Dutch circles. The Van Brunts lived sumptuously, throwing lavish parties for refugee nobility, the rooms of their mansion crowded with scarlet coats. I saw Fat Frederick Philipse at one of their soirees, that first year in New York, and cast a spell to make the man soil himself publicly (to his great mortification), achieving some small revenge for the incident with the cicada. I’d become giddy with power. With Mother Hulda’s grimoire in hand, my repertoire of spells had grown exponentially. A simple love potion and a low-cut bodice were sufficient to bewitch the son of the first Abraham Van Brunt.

  I chose my husband for his weakness. My mother had never seen the value of a weak husband, but I did. I would not be ruled, and I would have my way in all things. Had I chosen strength, I would have taken the elder brother, James Van Brunt, a lantern-jawed Hercules, renowned for his hardihood and feats of prowess. James would have consigned me to the kitchen and embroidery hoop. So I chose Hermanus for my groom and chose James to father Brom, a secret I’ve shared with no one until now. Do not think ill of me for this small deception. I was thinking of the future. I wanted a weak husband, but I would have a strong son.

  In truth, I should have chosen neither brother, for General Washington, against all odds, defeated the British at Yorktown, denying his enemy any clever escape to the sea. It was unimaginable. The American revolutionaries had won. The news of British defeat brought shock to the Tory community and disaster to the Van Brunts of New York. My new father-in-law fled to England, on the same ship as Philipse and old William Pugsley. General Howe abandoned New York, gathering his troops and sailing for home. He left the flag of King George flying over Manhattan, and greased the flagpole to spite any who would take it down.

  I watched Washington ride into New York on the evacuation day, to the cheers of patriots and the horror of my husband and I. On all corners flew the flag of thirteen stripes. Cannon salutes sounded and church bells rang. Hermanus expected to be arrested and hanged. The Van Brunt fortune that had so impressed me was in truth the stolen property of others. The manor house of a patriot, the furniture of a patriot, even the wardrobe of a patriot, to be seized by the new government and returned to their rightful owners. I should have roasted Hermanus immediately, but I still had great hopes for his inheritance, as old Abraham had smuggled much of his wealth abroad. We would survive. We possessed some dishonest gold, enough to buy land for ourselves, if we could find something away from the city.

  I was eager to leave. Half the buildings were in ruin, burned in the great fire of 1776. The poor found no relief, and the wailings from Canvass-town were hard to bear at night. Here is the ugly truth of civilization: the more people, the more outhouses. If any author had an inclination to write a treatise upon stinks and ill smells, he could find no better research subject than New York.

  At this critical juncture, by brother Hans wrote to me with momentous news. Now that Fat Frederick Philipse had fled, the Commission of Forfeitures would be auctioning the vast lands of Philipsburg Manor, making it possible for the tenant farmers of Tarrytown to own their fields at last. Hans hoped to leave Wolfert’s Roost and the employ of the Van Tassel family and to buy a small farm for himself, for he was eighteen and newly married.

  Hans had included a list of parcels to be auctioned. One particular item caught my eye. The Philipse manor house would be auctioned off that spring, along with the remnants of the mills. I intended to own that land, the Philipse Castle of my girlhood dreams, and the millpond itself, that font of magical power.

  I made haste, traveling alone with my four-year-old son, crossing the King’s Bridge on the first of March. I was going back to my horseman! I yearned to see the fields of my childhood, to see the Old Loop and the inn and the tavern. Perhaps to see fat Baltus again, for Hans assured me he’d survived the war. Baltus would find me greatly altered, would he not? And what would I find? What had become of my Tarrytown?

  The Road had certainly changed. The countryside smelled of rotting corpses, some buried in so slight a manner that the wagon ruts cut through the half-corrupted carcasses of soldiers. I did not shield Brom’s eyes. My little boy watched, fascinated, as the muddy skeletons passed our carriage window.

  “Oh, Mama,” he whispered. “Them British should have kept at home!”

  Many years later, incidentally, after I killed my Hermanus to be rid of him at last, James Van Brunt confronted me in my widowhood, demanding the truth of Brom’s paternity, for he saw much of himself in my strong son. Your true grandfather molders in the Van Brunt tomb, the inevitable bed of any man who challenges me.

  Women are another matter, of course.

  Cornelia bought the mills.

  September 7th, 1849

  The commissioners bowed to Beekman wealth and connections. Cornelia was a Van Cortland and so had familial claim to the mills. I was the daughter of a barber han
ged for Tory spy-craft. She had remained in her manor house dispensing brandy and bread to patriot soldiers, and I had fled to New York to become wife of a Tory bootlicker. What chance had I against a Mother of the Revolution? It galled me to see her celebrated and beloved, and to see the hatchet of William Crane displayed on the wall at Philipse Castle—now Beekman Manor—as a treasured heirloom of The Cause.

  I had no choice. I took a room at the Couenhoven Inn and plotted her murder.

  Everyone knew I had bid on the mills. I might be suspected if she fell to poison or some witchery. The town gossips were in full formation, their mouth-muskets primed to be shot off. I could not risk burning her. I might be seen, and I had no wish to curse Gerard—who, though a bit stouter, was still distressingly handsome. I would use my horseman, if he could still be raised, and when Cornelia was dead, perhaps a love potion might be slipped into her mourning husband’s morning coffee.

  I left little Brom with Hans. (Oh, my brother had transformed. I might have mistaken him for Papa.) I hiked into the woods, and, with some difficulty for the paths had become unfamiliar, I found the spot where, as a girl, I had fallen from the log. I filled a vial of water from the brook and slipped it into my pocket, then searched out the site of Mother Hulda’s hut. I scratched the burned soil of her once-tidy garden, fearing the lantern had been exhumed, but at last I found the buried hearthstone. I wiped mud away, revealing the devil-mark. I rolled the rock aside and peered into the tiny tomb.

  The lantern had rusted badly, becoming spotted and flaked. I carried it to Spook Rock and pried it open. The head was inside, fresh as the day I’d laid it there, handsome and pink-cheeked, still with a tiny spot of soap on its ear from my shave.

  Until I took it out.

  I must pause, Dylan, for I’d forgotten this moment. Was the horseman’s head truly without rot? Did love cloud my vision? It seems to me that the head had been beautiful until I took it from the lantern, whence the rot of seven years claimed it all at once and the flesh crumbled to dust, leaving only a skull, white and dry in my hand.