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

by Gleaves, Richard

  “You sure of that?”

  “I was. Last year, I laughed at this stuff.”

  “Me too. Look… I’m not a big science geek or anything, but don’t we go by evidence? Magic’s real. We’ve seen monsters and ghosts. I mean, look at us. We’re… Dirtman and Glowboy.”

  “That is not my superhero name.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. I’ll think of something butcher. But my point is: You can’t say the world’s just physics and math. Not anymore.”

  “I know. But… it ought to be.” Jason sighed and brought his other foot to the heating vent. “That’s the kind of world I want to live in. Not this one. Things should be rational and orderly and… clean… and make sense.”

  “But that’s not the world we live in, Jase. Our world is batshit crazy.”

  “Yeah. I know. I’ve… finally got my head around that.” He raised a glowing palm to the window, and his own face joined the red moon in the glass. “The world is full of batshit crazy things, things I don’t get and never expected. Weird rules and spooky stuff and evil people turned all wrong inside. But, still. I still feel like… It shouldn’t be like this. It should be so much better.” He made a fist and thumped the reddening moon. “So, yeah. Let’s be superheroes, Joey. Let’s make it right.”

  “You think we can?”

  “Somebody’s got to.” Jason clapped Joey on the shoulder, his eyes on the road ahead. “You and me, Lava Girl. Let’s do this, man. Let’s fix things.”

  Joey took a deep breath. “Or die trying.”

  The words hung in the air between them. “Yeah.” Jason brought his feet down and turned off the heater. The car got very cold, very fast. “Or die trying.”

  He pulled his sneakers on and tied them, then sat looking out the window again. It wasn’t a blood moon above, now. It was the moon on the tarot card.

  The Moon…

  The Sun…

  Judgment…

  The World…

  The Moon…

  The Sun…

  Judgment…

  The World…

  The last four Major Arcana. They’d show themselves tonight. He could feel it. The Journey of the Fool was almost over. Did he have to die trying? Or was there still a way to win?

  He didn’t know.

  No one knows. There’s no predestination.

  It’s up to us.

  It’s up to us.

  No matter what kind of World we’re dealt.

  It’s always up to us.

  “We’re almost there. See?” Joey cocked a thumb. The north cemetery gates drifted by. “The Blaze is packed. I hope we can find a parking… crap!”

  He hit the brakes and the tires squealed.

  Jason flew forward, his chest hitting the glove compartment, his ass sliding to the carpet. “What the hell?”

  Joey pointed. “Look look look!”

  Jason wriggled back up. A scattering of hazard lights and license plates crosshatched the road. People were climbing out, cursing, craning their necks, trying to see what was up.

  “An accident?” said Joey.

  “Park on the shoulder.”

  They rolled to a stop. Jason climbed out, shivering in the cold night air, missing the heater already, and clapped the door shut.

  “See anything?” said Joey, hanging out the driver’s side.

  “There’s a lot of rubbernecking. Stay here.”

  Jason trotted up the line of cars. A crowd, four or five deep, blocked the road, their backs turned.

  “Hey!” shouted a fat guy, approaching the crowd and waving his arms. “Move it, assholes! You can’t do a street fair on Broadway!” He tapped one of the people on the shoulder—an elderly woman with a curved spine. “Hello? What’s going on?”

  The woman spun. “Pumpkin blaaaze!” she growled.

  Jason stopped dead and darted into the shadows.

  The old woman’s eyes were on fire. She breathed sparks, and a tongue of blue flame licked her dentures. “Pumpkin blaaaze!”

  The fat guy yelped, backing away.

  “Pumpkin blaaaze,” roared the crowd, with a hundred voices, all turning, all burning, all eyes and mouths crackling with fire and smoke. They pinned the fat guy against a red van and breathed char into his face until they caught his kindling and his eyes burned too. The fat guy went still, turned his spotlight gaze in Jason’s direction. The twisted old woman cocked her head, smiling. They’d seen him. How? Oh. Jason hid his glowing hands. He stumbled backward, disbelieving, and fell hard onto the asphalt. The human jack-o’-lanterns closed in: “Pumpkin blaaaze. Pumpkin blaaaze. Pumpkin blaaaaze…”

  “Joey!” Jason screamed.

  A blast of dirt shot over Jason’s head and knocked the monsters aside, but more of them shuffled up the road. And more behind them. Joey grabbed Jason’s elbow and yanked him to his feet. He raised a hand and cracked the asphalt. A piece of Broadway lurched, tipping a sports car into the path of their attackers. The boys raced back to the Beamer, dove in, and got the doors locked just as the pumpkin-people reached them, blackening the windshield with sparks and ash.

  “Go! Go!” screamed Jason.

  Joey threw the car into reverse and hit the gas. The crowd fell away. He spun the wheel to avoid another car that was pulling in behind. The crowd attacked that driver, pulling him out and setting him on fire.

  Joey pounded the steering wheel. “What were we just saying about batshit crazy?”

  “Headlights off,” said Jason. “It’s Agathe. She’s done something at the millpond.”

  “But Zef’s in there!”

  “Let’s find a way around!”

  “On it!” He pulled up the drive of the cemetery, jumped out, and unlocked the north gate with his keys, beckoning. Jason slid over into the driver’s seat and took the Beamer through. Joey had barely slammed the cemetery gate behind him when the jack-o’-people arrived, reaching through the black bars, each face artfully carved with fire. They breathed smoke and sparks at Joey, but he backed out of range and ran up the steps of the admin building. He waved for Jason to follow.

  Jason parked in a hidden spot behind the Washington Irving Chapel and rolled his window down. “I’ve got to hide my hands.”

  “On it!” Joey fished inside a workman’s cart and returned with dirty yard gloves. As Jason pulled them on, gratefully, Joey heaved a dark green plastic bag to one shoulder and poured a stream of fertilizer out of it. He brought the empty smelly bag into the car, plopping into the passenger’s seat.

  “What’s the bag for?” said Jason.

  “Just drive. Keep the lights off.”

  “I can’t see!”

  “I know my cemetery. Go where I point.”

  Jason drove the Beamer up and around a maze of headstones and tombs, following Joey’s directions. Joey was more intense and focused than Jason had ever seen him ever before. He patted his friend’s shoulder. “Zef’ll be okay…”

  “Park here,” Joey snapped.

  They’d crested the highest hill, parking next to the column and the marble Jesus. Below them, the Hollow was dark and powerless, but the grounds of Philipsburg swarmed with ghostly blue lights. The bewitched crowd had encircled the millpond, a line of human shields, on the Horseman Bridge and around either side.

  “We’ll never get through that crowd,” said Jason.

  “On it,” said Joey. “But you won’t like it.”

  “What?”

  “Go.”

  Jason drove as directed, tires crackling gravel. They skirted the Irving grave and slipped downhill. They parked behind the Old Dutch Church, shielded from view by the steep embankment of the burying ground. The gothic-peaked windows flickered, as if the place had been set afire by a strike of lightning. A jack-eyed sentry, a teenager still wearing pumpkin antennae and carrying a glow-stick lightsaber, shuffled around the church. They ducked down.

  “Okay, what are you thinking?” said Jason.

  “Kate’s plan. Valerie will be in there, right?”

 
; Jason considered. “Yeah. Agathe needs Gifted blood. Valerie’s a Deep Witch. She’d have brought her. Definitely.”

  “And she memorized the binding spell?”

  “She said she did. But you’ve got the grimoire, in case?”

  Joey searched his pockets, then the glove compartment, but groaned. “Oh, shoot me.”

  “Where’s the grimoire, Joey?”

  “I changed clothes at the hospital. Mom’s got it. It’s probably in the hamper by now.”

  “Great. Okay then. Let’s hope Valerie’s got a good memory.”

  “We get the bones to her and she can end Agathe, right?”

  “Yeah. Assuming she’s still alive. But how do we even get in there?”

  “This is the part you’re not going to like. The monsters are watching Broadway but not the river.”

  “The river?”

  “The tunnel below the Horseman Bridge. We can float right under their feet.”

  “Float?”

  “Sorry but we’ve got to… swim in.”

  Jason ran a palm down his sweatshirt as if to comfort the Horseman on the front. “I’ll never be dry again, will I?”

  “Not tonight. Here.” Joey produced the plastic bag. “For the skeleton.”

  Jason got out and fetched his wet bundle from the back seat, untying his improvised carry and transferring Agathe’s soggy bones. Her green-slimed skull grinned toothlessly at him. He dropped it into the plastic bag, hoping she’d gag on the stink of fertilizer.

  They locked the car and crept into the bushes. They picked their way down the hill to where the Pocantico gurgled through a tree-shaded channel of red brick. Jason put his legs over, clutched the bone bag to his chest, dropped, and hit the water. His gloved hand caught a boulder. Joey pinched his nose and plunged in next. He grabbed Jason’s elbow and fought the current.

  They gave each other a nod for luck and started drifting.

  Tentatively, the two wet heads floated nearer to the official Headless Horseman Bridge where, just above and miserably close, flame-faced Tarrytowners patrolled the road. The mask of Leatherface glided past but did not look down. The endless whisper of “Pumpkin blaaaze…” grew louder. The boys held their breath and willed themselves to become dark and small. The tunnel under Broadway swallowed them, and they exhaled. Then they turned their attention to the widening iris at the far end. To the millpond and the floating pumpkin raft, blazing blue and orange, and the grounds of Philipsburg beyond.

  Jason caught Zef’s thoughts: I can’t stop her! I can’t stop her! I can’t stop her!

  Zef? he called, telepathically. It’s Jason! Joey’s with me!

  No! Get Joey out of here. I can’t stop her!

  What can’t you stop? What is she doing?

  She’s murdering people!

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  “Bleeding in the Waters”

  Jason and Joey watched helplessly from the dark tunnel as a body hit the millpond with a splash, rocking the pumpkin raft at center. The smaller floats caught the ripples, each pumpkin-face nodding happily, “Yes yes yes.”

  The constellation Orion reflected in the pond. Orion the hunter, who is headless. Jason didn’t see him in the sky though, only in the water, which he now shared with an almost totally red moon. Rows of pumpkins dotted the shore, where jack-o’-people stood motionless among the picnic tables and concession tents and Halloween Trees and Hollow set-pieces eerily lit. Acid green light burned in the cheeks of Philipsburg Manor. The lanterns in its windows hissed with blue flame. Spooky music played from speakers all around, the soundtrack of the Blaze. Lisa Mayfair stood blank-faced next to the Devil’s throne, holding the reliquary. It glowed softly with white brilliance. Agathe sat enthroned, framed by bat wings. Jason cringed at the sight of the wedding dress on Kate’s body, just like the white dress in his Spirit Dance vision.

  “Bring out another Gifted,” Agathe snapped, with an imperious gesture.

  Hadewych and Zef paced the rickety milldam, which was adorned with pumpkin gargoyles and the words THE GREAT JACK-O’-LANTERN BLAZE. Hadewych walked down to the end nearest the gift shop and chose a blank-faced woman with a Mohawk hairstyle. He escorted her back to the center. Zef turned away and covered his eyes.

  At Agathe’s command, the woman lurched into midair and dangled over the water.

  “That’s Abby,” whispered Joey, craning his neck. “She ran security.”

  Jason brought a gloved finger to his lips.

  Agathe raised a handful of knives. “So nice to have professional carving options.” She chose one and flung it. The long blade went right through Abby’s neck, the tip bursting through the other side. The flame-faced watchers sighed… oooh… aaah… Sparks wriggled from their mouths to join the stars. A splash of glowing fluorescent red streaked the water, and the moon there grew even bloodier.

  Agathe inspected her reliquary and frowned. “Still not enough!” She gestured, and Abby pinwheeled in midair, hitting the water with a splash. The floating pumpkins nodded. “Yes. Yes. More. More.”

  Jason searched the faces of the remaining Gifted. Valerie stood among them, possessed but alive. Thank you. He just had to… wake her up somehow, if he could get to her.

  “What do we do?” asked Joey.

  Jason held tight to the bag of Agathe’s bones and snagged a small pumpkin float. “On it.”

  Buddy heard the splash of the body, but he didn’t look up. He’d remained hidden in the slave garden, crouched behind the pumpkin spider web, hands over his eyes.

  People dying! People dying! Can’t look! Can’t look! Tell me when the scary part’s over. When is the scary part over, Daddy? When?

  Buddy’s leg shot out. Something had him! What?

  The red-eyed horse nipped at his pants leg, giving him a yank. It was going to drag him away, drag him over to the scary lady to get cut up! Buddy yanked his jeans out of its teeth and raised a trembling finger.

  “Bad horse.”

  It was a bad horse. A very bad horse. It lowered wide black nostrils and blew snot into Buddy’s face.

  “Bring another, Hadewych!” cried Agathe.

  Hadewych stood on the milldam, watching the Mohawked woman float. She rotated with the current of gasoline and joined the other bodies pinned against the milldam by the gasoline spill sluicing through it. She never even knew. Never even saw death. Never even looked it in the face.

  “Did you hear me?” Agathe’s thrown knife embedded itself in the rail just in front of Hadewych, shivering splinters.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  Zef caught his father’s arm, eyes pleading, and whispered, “No more, Dad.”

  Hadewych spread his hands. “She’d just kill us instead.” He gazed at the clumped-up corpses, the corpses the gasoline kept laying at his feet, and went to fetch another Gifted, ignoring the sound of his son vomiting over the rail.

  Even with his stomach empty, Zef felt nauseated. These poor people. These poor people. And Jason had brought Joey—Joey could be the next one dead, the next one floating, bleeding… bleeding…

  “Joseph,” called Agathe. “My sweet child. Are you well?”

  Zef spit stomach acid and straightened. “I’m fine.”

  “You look peaked. I don’t think you’re having much fun.”

  “Fun?” Zef gestured to the bodies clumped below, their faces collecting a halo of black leaves. “This isn’t fun.”

  “Leave him alone,” said Hadewych, escorting another Gifted to the center of the dam—a blank-faced man still wearing pale green pajamas.

  Agathe inspected her knife collection. “Bodies shouldn’t disturb him. Spiders must feed and leeches must drink. And Van Brunts—BROM! BROM! THE WATER, BROM!” She shook her head, clearing it. “And Van Brunts must rule. We rule this town now. I have beaten Cornelia. I have the mills. And I will have my kiss.”

  The man in pajamas shot into the sky, as if she’d cried, “Pull!” She threw another knife. It pierced the man’s stomach and yanked
downward, opening him. Zef averted his eyes but still heard the sickening splash.

  “Stop it!” he cried. “Just stop it!”

  “I think our Zef is having doubts.” Agathe stepped down from her throne, leaving possessed Eddie tied to the armrest. Her fingers trailed across the shimmering reliquary as she approached, raising purple sparks. “I think… our Zef has betrayed us.”

  On the hidden speakers, the soundtrack of the Blaze played tremolo string chords, jittery and dangerous.

  “Of course he hasn’t,” said Hadewych.

  Zef forced himself to calm down. A corpse in the water kept kicking the rickety boards, like a fast heartbeat. “I’m sorry. I’m new to this. Just… learning the family business.” His eyes darted to his father. “Go Van Brunts.”

  “You have betrayed us.” Agathe strolled down the dam. Her fingertip tested the point of a nasty-looking serrated knife. “Don’t lie to me. I know everything the girl knew, remember? I know your plans. I know you sent the Crane boy down into the aqueduct to find my bones. He’s dead, by the way. Hadewych drowned him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Hadewych.

  “That was my Horseman’s kill.” She scowled. “You wasted blood.”

  “I’m sorry. Take it out on me, not Zef.”

  “I’m on your side,” said Zef, desperate to convince her. “I was fooling them! I had no choice! I am a Van Brunt.”

  Agathe searched his face. “Prove it.” She extended the knife, handle first. “The next kill is yours.”

  “No,” said Hadewych.

  Agathe thrust the knife into Zef’s grip. “Anyone you choose. Even your father.”

  Zef spun and looked at Hadewych, whose eyes had gone wide. Zef was half tempted to do it.

  “Choose someone!” Agathe barked.

  Zef’s hand trembled. “I… choose…”

  Choose Valerie, came a voice. Jason, whispering in Zef’s head. Zef glanced down and saw his cousin floating in the water with a bundle in his arms. Jason was using one of the small pumpkin floats as a shield, his head behind a flickering skull-face. He’d drifted close, still unseen by Agathe.