Sleepy Hollow: Rise Headless and Ride

by Richard Gleaves

  “How is he?” Jason said.

  “He’s fine. His memory’s fuzzy but he’s out of bed. They say he’ll be home in a few days.”

  “That’s fantastic. How did you hear?”

  She shrugged. “Zef told me. You know what that means, don’t you?” She slipped an arm around Jason’s neck.

  “Yeah – I have my best friend back.”

  “And,” she said with a conspiratorial smile, “Joey just might be one of us now.”

  “What?”

  “He was attacked and survived. Just watch. He’ll have a Gift too.”

  “Which Gift?” said Jason.

  She shrugged.

  “It could be anything. Anything at all.”

  The adjudicator strode toward the bench, stopping to gather his papers and accept a cup of coffee from the clerk.

  “Gotta go. Good luck,” Kate said.

  “Wait.” Jason took her sleeve. “Which side are you on? Mine or Hadewych’s?”

  She spread her hands. The answer was obvious.

  “Whichever side makes you happy,” she said.

  She kissed him on his tangled head and slipped away.

  Jason had wanted to ask her that for days. Her father, State Senator Paul Usher, had been a key character witness for Hadewych. Why not? They were practically in-laws.

  Usher strode into the hearing room, pausing at the door for the convenience of any photographers who might be waiting inside. None were. Once again, Jason was impressed by the presence of the man. He obviously lifted weights. He had size and solidity. But he was also movie-star handsome, with wavy gold-brown hair that seemed to twist like braids of Medusa. He smoothed his temples and joined Hadewych at his table, putting an arm around his friend’s shoulders and slapping his back.

  Paul Usher’s eyes met Jason’s.

  They held each other’s gaze.

  Neither blinked. Jason felt he had been turned to stone.

  “Eyes forward,” said Valerie. She had slipped in alongside Jason. He broke eyes with Usher. Valerie sat drumming her fingers on the table nervously.

  “Hear ye, hear ye,” the bailiff cried.

  The adjudicator climbed up and took his place. Jason imagined the little man to have a telephone book in his chair so he could see over.

  Just before the adjudicator spoke, something caught Jason’s eye. As Valerie drummed her fingers, Jason noticed that a paper clip sat on the table underneath her palm. She wasn’t touching it, but the paper clip spun like a pinwheel. She noticed him looking and pressed her palm flat. He didn’t have time to wonder.

  “Mister Crane,” said the adjudicator.

  Jason shot to his feet. The elf shook his head. A derisive chuckle perked through the room.

  “No need to stand,” he said.

  Jason sank back into his chair.

  “You have petitioned this court to be emancipated from the guardianship stipulated in your grandmother’s will. Your argument has been that you do not need a guardian and that you are near enough to the age of majority that the court should allow you to live as an adult. I have one word for you, young man – and that word is… baloney. You have repeatedly falsified your age. You have demonstrated an arrogant compulsion to aggrandize yourself through your supposed descent from Ichabod Crane. And worst of all – and this hangs heaviest on my heart – you have desecrated a sacred monument, a national treasure. Therefore it is the decision of this court that your request for emancipation be denied.”

  “Your honor,” Anna Franklin stood.

  “Counselor?” the little man scowled.

  “We would like to re-assert our petition for Ms. Valerie Maule to be Jason’s guardian.”

  “That petition has been heard and denied. She isn’t a relation and the will doesn’t nominate her – while Mister Van Brunt is already executor.”

  “Still – ”

  “Denied. I don’t like repeating myself.”

  Anna Franklin sat. Jason saw Paul Usher nodding and patting Hadewych’s back again. Hadewych was looking at Jason with a grin of triumph.

  “The will stands,” said the adjudicator. “Mister Van Brunt shall be guardian of Jason Crane’s person and estate. Mister Crane, I am told that you are a flight risk and that you had made preparations to escape the judgment of this court. You are therefore ordered not to leave the town limits of Sleepy Hollow or Tarrytown for any reason without the express permission of your guardian. This order shall stand until you reach your eighteenth birthday. Case dismissed.”

  The gavel came down like a horse’s hoof.

  #

  Hadewych waited by the Mercedes afterwards.

  “I’ll drive,” he said brightly.

  Jason climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the door. Hadewych turned the key. He closed his eyes with pleasure as the engine roared to life.

  “Put on your seat belt, son,” he said.

  Jason winced, but he obeyed. The car pulled away from the courthouse. They chased autumn leaves down the Albany post road. Jason leaned his cheek on the cold glass and watched the town go by.

  What a mess I’m in.

  He glanced at Hadewych, who was strumming his fingers on the steering wheel. It killed Jason to see the man so happy. He could guess why. He didn’t know how Hadewych planned to get his hands on the Legacy, but he knew Hadewych had a plan, and that, so far, everything was proceeding to schedule.

  He would lose everything. He had lost everything. He was alone in the world. Alone. And now he’d been given into the custody and care of this evil man.

  The trees grew thicker beyond the windows.

  The Horseman still roamed those woods, too. Eventually he would find Jason again, when he couldn’t run anymore.

  Sleepy Hollow owns me… Jason thought. It does.

  They passed Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. The spikes atop the fence seemed ready for severed heads.

  The cemetery owns me.

  They passed the Old Dutch Church; workmen were boarding up Jason’s window.

  The church owns me.

  They passed the millpond, wide and sinister and choked with leaves.

  Philipsburg Manor owns me.

  They turned uphill.

  And Hadewych –

  Something rolled under Jason’s feet as the car climbed. He reached down and picked it up. It was a bottle of nail polish. Jungle Red.

  He stared at the thing.

  What am I thinking?

  No one owns me.

  Never.

  And he wasn’t alone. He could hear Eliza whenever he chose to listen for her. He didn’t need to use his Gift. He didn’t need visions. He knew her so well, and loved her so much, that he could write her lines for her. She was like a character in a beloved story, read so often that he knew every word by heart:

  “Your daddy and his daddy and his daddy and your mama and my Arthur. All of them are in you. And a little of me too? At least a little bit? Huh?”

  That’s what she’d said in the vision of the attic, right before she died. Was that her final message, her final question? Little Jason hadn’t answered then. But his heart answered her now.

  More than a little bit, you silly old woman. You know that. I am you. I’m what you made me.

  His held the bottle against his heart. Another fragment drifted to mind. The night of the dance, when he’d slipped in the sour milk…

  “Sorry to leave a mess. I couldn’t help it,” she had said.

  “It’s okay,” he’d called to her. “I don’t mind. Love you.”

  “Likewise!”

  She had left a mess then. She had left a mess now. But he could clean it up. He didn’t blame her. She tried so hard. Pain shot through him, a bright angry needle of pain. All she had wanted to do was to set him up in life, to set him on the right path! And now look at things!

  Yes. Look, Jason Crane. Really look. Really look at things.

  Look at the people you’ve met here. Look at Zef or Kate or Joey. Look at Valerie. Look at Hadewy
ch, even, or Brom or Dylan. Our parents never set us up perfectly in life. Never. Every generation leaves problems behind. And we all get different things. Unrealistic expectations, or unconditional love, a handful of documents or a terrible injury, a stone quarry or a dark legacy. We might be left with a bar of gold or just a photo of red sneakers and wildflowers. It doesn’t matter. It’s still up to us in the end.

  When you lose the head of your family, you don’t just give up because no one’s there to do things for you. You have to do things for yourself. You have to rise to the occasion, and ride out to meet your challenges. That’s what every generation does. That’s what we always will do, no matter what problems we inherit.

  And Eliza had made him strong. Not muscles. That wasn’t her kind of strength. She’d passed along her love of life and her will to make things happen. That was her bequest. That was Jason’s inheritance. She’d left him himself, his own character. She’d made him a man. And a good man. She’d left a far better legacy than any supernatural Gift or psychic power.

  He closed his hand around the little bottle of nail polish.

  Thank you for that, my dear. My dear grandmother. You did fine. Wait and see. I have everything I need. I have myself, and a lot of you.

  They turned onto Gory Brook Road. Jason looked at Hadewych, who was smiling.

  “You don’t even know, do you?” Jason said.

  “Know what?” asked Hadewych indulgently.

  “That you’ve already lost.”

  Hadewych chuckled. “It would appear not.”

  “Not yet,” Jason said. “Round one to you, maybe. But you’re going down in the end.”

  “And why is that?”

  Jason closed his fist on the bottle and looked out the window. “Because I’m Eliza Merrick’s grandson,” he said.

  Hadewych didn’t reply. He frowned and looked away, worried. The house drifted slowly into view.

  Jason heard Eliza at his shoulder once more, his good angel, saying: “My Jason is better. He’s a hero, this one. I want you to have a heroic life. Like me.”

  And I will, the boy thought. I will.

  The Mercedes slowed and came to a stop in the driveway of 417 Gory Brook Road.

  A shadowy figure moved in the attic window…

  …and a little black poodle leapt with joy at Jason Crane’s return.

  THE END

  Coming Next:

  Jason Crane: Book Two

  “Make for the Bridge”

  APPENDIX

  FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER

  [First page missing]

  ..and your absence is keenly felt by the trees and grounds of Sunnyside, which are in need of your ministrations. As to myself, while pleasures of town, table and the gaming board may enforce a certain literary abstinence, copious servings of praise from visitors (upon which an old man may hope to grow fat), the contemplative peace of my home (broken only by the damnable clatter of the tracks), and the consoling draught of a bottle at hearthside (but only one) are far preferable to any solitary fagging of the pen in pursuit of the almighty dollar.

  I write to you now, imposing upon myself a painful separation from these delights, in fulfillment of my long-delayed promise to supply you with some account of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, how it came to be, and what truths if any may be found within it. I confess that this Legend, upon which some small part of my reputation is based, was not wholly fashioned from the flax of imagination. Though no man other than myself could have told it in so pleasing a fashion, I confess my ability to conceive of such a one as the Headless Horseman would have been incommensurate to the task had the specter not been described to me by one Hans Van Ripper of Tarrytown.

  This incomparable fellow was a benefactor of my youth, in the days of my long wanderings. The offer of his hay barn, on one occasion, made all the difference twixt a warm night among the milk goats and a frostbitten bed in some field. This generosity, he explained to me, was given as Christian recompense for the blessings of that Providence which had raised him from past indigence to his then-current station of mere penury. Long hours did I spend at the Van Ripper table, fed with ham and Indian pudding by a gentle goodwife who, having no children of her own, looked upon me as their surrogate, the tow-headed substitute for her own wistfully imagined but ne’er-born brood. For my part, I assisted with the light labors of the farm as, in the Legend, I assign to Ichabod, as recompense for his own board. In my tale the pedagogue “helped to make hay, mended the fences, took the horses to water, drove the cows from pasture, and cut wood for the winter fire”, and so did I.

  In the early weeks of October, 1798, fear of the pestilential fever that was then engulfing Manhattan forced my removal to the Tarrytown home of my friend James Paulding, a writer of merit (if not fame). This same Paulding was, of late, the Secretary of our Navy. Ah! In those days he and I brimmed with such rising sap as must find release in either literature or the fair sex, in frolicsome words or in ribald deeds (the former may be found in Salmagundi, the latter I shall not recount lest I offend your sensibility, or the postmaster’s.)

  One day I took advantage of my proximity to renew my acquaintance with Van Ripper. Arriving at his farm, I discovered him loading a wagon with his household goods. He explained that his harvest had been poor and, having no children or wife (the distaff Ripper having gone to her rest), he had sold his farm with the intent of seeking his fortune in Kentucky, a state which, judging from the great Exodus of our citizenry, must surely be another Eden. It is this spectacle of Van Ripper, astride his laden wagon, that prompted my portrayal of Ichabod’s similar ambitions.

  A shot rang through the valley, the rifle of some hunter laying up game for the winter. The sound was piercing and clear and the horses took fright or were “spooked”. The luggage on Van Ripper’s wagon, high as a Tower of Babel, became shaken and all the goods confused, which may be counted a singular piece of luck or a great calamity, for a book fell directly at my feet and thus was the Legend born.

  I picked up the book and observed the title to be Cotton Mather's "History of Witchcraft”. This was extraordinary, and I expressed my surprise to the old farmer, who in my experience was neither a man of letters, nor even of literacy. The pleasant, shabby fellow confided that the book had been left behind by one Ichabod Crane, an itinerant schoolteacher much prone to superstition, who had domiciled at the Van Ripper farm for a time, until his disappearance under most mysterious circumstances.

  And so that day Providence, plague, gunshot, witchcraft, and the state of Kentucky all conspired to bring the Legend to my attention. My curiosity whetted, I invited Van Ripper to a local tavern, in which we tarried that long October afternoon.

  The regret of my life is that I doubted the truth of Van Ripper’s account. I found the story of Ichabod to be a delightful episode on which to hang a tale, but I was not so credulous as to believe that these strange events had transpired in actuality. My reasoning mind (unreasonably) credited Van Ripper with possession of an imagination; thus when in time I came to pen my own telling of the Legend, I retained the names that had been given me: Van Brunt, Van Tassel, Van Ripper, and Crane; yet had I known that the man Brom Bones existed in the person of wealthy and powerful Abraham Van Brunt, owner of the Tarrytown Quarry, builder of the Croton Aqueduct and confederate of Archbishops, I may well have reconsidered the use of his cognomen.

  Similarly, had I foreseen the injury that would be done to the person of Ichabod Crane, who saw his political ambitions in New York dashed by the association of his name with my Legend, I would have forgone my ridicule of his physiognomy. I met him briefly once, in New York. The judge, in truth, was in all particulars the ludicrous scarecrow I describe, but such truths and such estimates are seldom published to the entire world.

  Most importantly, if I had known the Horseman himself existed, if I had known that I would invoke a spirit of great fury and power, if I had then seen him with my own eyes as I now have, never would I have t
urned my talent to giving him shape.

  Yes, nephew, the Horseman exists.

  Do not imagine this to be the fantasy of a feeble old man. You would be repeating the same mistake I made with Van Ripper. This I tell you in all earnestness:

  The Horseman rises, headless, and rides.

  I do not know from whence the Horseman sprang, aside from Van Ripper’s contention that he was a Hessian soldier killed in war. I believe Van Ripper withheld the truth, which I suspect involved his sister Agathe, wife of Hermanus Van Brunt and mother to the aforementioned Abraham. Yes, the old farmer was uncle to Brom Bones, and his sister Agathe was long rumored to be the consort of the Horseman in some fashion. I have often wondered whether Van Ripper, in journeying to Kentucky, was fleeing some other kind of bad harvest. Some family legacy that he feared, even if he did not wholly understand it. I can believe no evil of that generous man. Agathe is dead now, as are Van Ripper, Van Brunt, the fair Katrina, and the unfortunate Crane. I do not know from what source we will ever know the truth of these matters, unless their souls also rise from their several graves to inform us.

  I am thankfully discharged of my duty, now, and the history of my Legend is told you. As you love me, dispose of these pages and not keepsake them; do not entrust them to old Knickerbocker.

  Further, as you value your own hide, heed this: when next you visit, do not travel alone.

  I have oft seen the Horseman riding in the Hollow. I will not speak of these sights here. My pen has given far too much substance to the fiend already.

  Your Uncle,

  Washington Irving

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Richard Gleaves is the composer, lyricist and playwright of

  Dorian, World and Time Enough, The Golden Days, Oswald on Ice, Omniscience and Adrenaline Junkie. He is winner of BMI’s 2004 Harrington Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement, and is composer-in-residence for New Music New York.