Sleepy Hollow: Bridge of Bones

by Richard Gleaves

  Published in the United States by

  Turtlebug Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is entirely coincidental.

  The places in this book are real, though.

  Go find them, explore them, and celebrate them.

  Edited by Jennifer Snow

  Story Edited by David Gatewood

  Cover Design by MC Corley

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  First Edition

  Copyright © 2014 Richard Gleaves

  FOR DISCUSSIONS AND EXTRAS

  VISIT JASON ON FACEBOOK

  FACEBOOK.COM/THEJASONCRANESERIES

  ALL THE LOCATIONS IN THIS BOOK EXIST

  FIND THEM IN SLEEPY HOLLOW, NY

  MAP HERE

  DEDICATION

  To all fathers and sons

  &

  To my dad, R. Lynn Gleaves

  I am the son of a good man

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to my mom, Pat Gleaves, for her encouragement and love

  Thanks to Danny Smolenski, who makes these books better

  Thanks to Washington Irving, who made these books possible

  Thanks to Doug Boyd, for helping me get Jason down from the roof

  Thanks to Claudia Dattoma-McIntyre, who taught me to cater

  Thanks to Jim Logan of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery for teaching me about hemlocks and woody adelgig

  Thanks to my Facebook friends who are always there to translate German or Dutch at 3 a.m.

  Thanks to the people of Sleepy Hollow, for sharing their stories

  Thanks to the Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct for giving me the chance to explore underground

  Thanks to Historic Hudson Valley for making sure these places are still around for us to write about

  Thanks to the ladies of the Philipsburg Manor Gift Shop in anticipation of this book being displayed by the register

  ~and~

  Special thanks to Adam Reed, Kathy Wallace, Sal Durante, Dianne Durante, Will George and all my other friends, first readers, and collaborators. You kept me from jumping off this long, long bridge.

  PROLOGUE

  The ladies of the Philipsburg Manor Gift Shop closed their registers and, with one last loving glance at the Horseman calendars and Horseman fridge magnets and Horseman canvas totes, clocked out and locked the doors, not to return until spring. The white box of Philipsburg Manor dozed by the millpond, eyes shuttered. The polystyrene phantasms and latex ghouls of the Horseman’s Hollow had been exorcised to storage—somewhere in Brooklyn or White Plains—entombed behind cardboard and excelsior and mothballs. Ticket sales had been tallied. Final paychecks had been sent to actors and electricians and the rest of the proceeds apportioned to the accounts of Historic Hudson Valley for upkeep of Sleepy Hollow landmarks.

  Across Broadway, a carved pumpkin rotted among the graves of the Burying Ground, its mouth drawn in as if it were missing its dentures. A torn ticket for the Haunted Hayride fluttered in the weeds nearby, like a purple flower left for the dead—for Abraham Martling or Gideon McChain or Ann Couenhoven. Or for Captain John Hilleker, dead since eighteen-twenty-four, buried beneath a moss-shrouded rhyme:

  Corruption, earth and worms

  Shall but refine my flesh

  Till my triumphant spirit comes

  To put it on afresh.

  A sheet of plywood patched the northeast eye of the Old Dutch Church, a stopgap until funds could be found to repair the recent vandalism. Some fool teenager—that Crane boy—had jumped through the church window on Halloween night, claiming to have been fleeing the Headless Horseman. The kid had probably been drunk or doing drugs. Such a shame. Where were the parents? Most Tarrytowners agreed that Halloween and teenagers simply didn’t mix.

  No jack o’ lanterns smiled from the stairs of church, now. The double doors had lost their harvest wreaths and, inside, no storyteller spun tales of Ichabod or Brom or the fair Katrina—not in November—yet the fieldstone walls, having absorbed a thousand tellings of the Legend, still whispered “make the bridge… make the bridge…” to any child who came to listen. On the roof, the two weathervanes spun lazily in opposite directions, like long-winded preachers debating doctrine—endlessly, endlessly circling but arriving at no agreement. A thread of smoke from the chimney made up its own mind and drifted heretically southward, towards the Headless Horseman Bridge.

  Halloween had passed over—according to the calendar, at least. Tourist season had come and gone, like so many seasons before. No pumpkin-headed scarecrow menaced traffic at the intersection of Beekman and Broadway. The scarecrow had eloped to the firehouse and would lurk in a broom cupboard for the next eleven months, scaring no one but the elderly and forgetful janitor. Ghosts and werewolves had been banished from every window, save one. A vintage witch decal grinned in the window of Andy Ng’s Japanese Sushi Restaurant, her green cheeks rouged yellow by the sun, since Andy left her taped there year-round.

  The town had quieted. The sidewalks had emptied. Not a single stomachache remained to memorialize the Milk Duds. Yet—this year—something lingered. October the thirty-first may have passed over but some ghost of it remained, like an aroma of apple peelings and incense and cadavers—persisting, infusing the air—the way a body dead a week can be smelt as far as five hundred yards away. This… spirit… wafted between the houses and slipped in through the weather-stripping. It kissed the foreheads of the children as they slept.

  The children did not sleep well. Throughout Tarrytown, the littlest ones awoke screaming at midnight or sobbed silently, staring at the man in the moon or the misshapen shadow behind the bedroom door. (“Something’s watching me, Mama…”) Their parents comforted them—and themselves (“It’s just a stage.”)—but the fits continued. Neighbors seldom discuss their children’s terrors, either out of embarrassment or pride, and so no one in town realized how widespread the nightmares had become. Except maybe Alice Morse, the part-time cashier of CVS Pharmacy, who noticed with passing curiosity an unusual uptick in the sale of night-lights.

  Something had happened.

  No one spoke of it but everyone sensed it. They sensed a… tug, as if something called for attention. An ache, as if something wanted to be mourned. A silent scream, as if something demanded retribution. It came from… up there, above the town, where the ancient woods might have been the advance line of an army. Yes. That’s where it lived, whatever it was. In the bracken, in the deep, sharpening its hatchets and biding its time.

  PART ONE

  “The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole nine fold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.”

  —The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving

  CHAPTER ONE

  “The Honorary Van Brunt”

  Jason can never remember how the Nightmare begins.

  The Nightmare is a river fed by secret sources, from some drip of rainwater seeping through the graveyards of the past, gathering itself into a rush and tumble of images. The Nightmare begins like rot in the roots of the forest on some afternoon of Indian summer tens of thousands of days ago. It begins with Jason’s grandmother, with grave rubbings and hidden treasure. It begins on Halloween, or Christmas, or the Fourth of July. It begins on the night when Jason’s parents drowned at Kensico Dam. It begins on the road where Ichabod Crane met a galloping headless Hessian. Or maybe it has no beginning at all.
Who can say? The Nightmare’s beginning is a secret, lost and forgotten, maybe forever. All dreams pick up somewhere in the middle. And all dreamers get dragged along with the current, to flail about helplessly, ignorant of both origins and endings.

  Jason can never remember how the Nightmare begins, but it always ends the same way. At the bridge. With a snap of bones. Jason cries out in agony. His legs break like shards of glass. Something crushes them. He is pinned from the thighs down. It is night and he is drowning. He thrashes in ice water. His weeping legs lay anchored on shore, higher than his body, and the broken foundations of Ichabod’s bridge loom overhead: two great piers of stone, separated by the rot of the timbers between, all their connections forgotten, eroded away by a river of time. To Jason, the piers look like stone giants. Fee fi fo fum. I’ll grind your bones to make my bread. And his leg bones are grinding. Grinding to flour.

  The piers raise arms of rough-hewn timber, linking hands from opposite shores. The broken bridge is restored again. Is this the past? Perhaps. The forest is deeper. The waters of the Pocantico River are wider. The current breaks against the abutments, throwing a spray of fireworks at the moonlight. Jason tries to heave himself up, out of the water, but can’t. He falls back. The river invades his lungs and stomach. It claps his ears. He reaches for the stars. He begs for salvation.

  And the Headless Horseman comes.

  Jason is sure that this is the Horseman, even though the figure has its head. He recognizes the hatchet, the same hatchet as on Halloween night: a wooden stock and flaring blade, edge curved and wickedly spiked at top. Jason crashed through the window of the Old Dutch Church to escape that hatchet. But he cannot escape it now. The Monster stands above, featureless, as Jason drowns. The blade falls. It cuts two fingers from Jason’s beseeching hand. It falls again, notching his forearm. It pulls free, swings wild, and hacks his belly, going deep, pushing pain and blood and nausea into Jason’s throat. It rips flesh from his ribcage, skin from his shoulder. It feeds in a frenzy, biting his arms, his hip, his groin.

  The cold water drinks Jason’s blood. It laps at him, suckles at him. The Horseman is screaming something now. Jason can’t hear the words. He is under the surface, through the looking glass, halfway swallowed by death already. But the ripples clear. A cloud unveils the moon. And in that moment before the final blow—the final, beheading chop—the face of Jason’s murderer swims into focus…

  …and he sees the Monster clearly at last.

  Charley made a noise like the squeal of tires.

  “Wha—?” Jason sat up in bed. His heart was pounding. He scanned the darkness, listening for footsteps or the approach of enemies. A car door slammed in the driveway. Charley yipped. Jason patted the poodle’s head as if to silence a snooze alarm. “Shh. It’s only Zef.”

  Jason fell back on his pillow. His hands went to his neck, his belly, his crotch. Check. Check. Check. All parts present and accounted for. His breathing deepened, his heart rate slowed, and the Nightmare evaporated like a handprint on a mirror. He rubbed his nose and dug sleep out of his eyes. Ugh. Will this thing ever go away? This same nightmare had come every night, had kept coming every damn night since Halloween: over three weeks of nightmares now. He’d had the same nightmare—he did the math—twenty-four nights in a row and it was really pissing him off.

  Jason had never been a finicky sleeper. He could sleep almost anywhere. Hell, if he hadn’t fallen asleep in the cemetery after Eliza’s funeral he might have escaped the Horseman entirely. But if this nightmare didn’t stop soon he was ready to give up sleep completely. He’d go live at Starbucks, become a caffeine freak, a skinny teenage vampire with dark under-eye bags and a restless leg.

  What else could he do about it? Visit the school counselor? And tell her what? That he suffered from post-phantasmal stress disorder? There’s no pill for that. He’d hoped that the Nightmare would just fade away—another wound to scab and heal with time like those on his scalp and neck. But the Nightmare hadn’t scabbed. It hadn’t healed. No. If anything, it had grown gangrenous. More vicious and more bloody.

  He thumbed a switch and blinked against the lamplight. He rolled over and checked his phone. No messages. No surprise there. He set the phone down on the side table where his grandmother’s nail polish bottles marched across their mirrored tray. One of them had fallen over. Jason righted the little Redcoat and nudged it back into formation.

  This was still her room. He’d stacked his comics in her closet. He’d hung his clothes on her hangers. He’d taped three photos to her dresser mirror—photos of his heroes: Howard Carter, discoverer of King Tut’s tomb, Carl Sagan, scientist and skeptic, and Eliza, in her youth, wearing her pilot’s jacket and posing with her Cessna. But he’d changed nothing else. He couldn’t bear to. And so he lived in an old lady’s room, surrounded by rose patterns and knickknacks and the ethereal presence of Chanel No. 5. Eliza’s bathrobe hung on the closet door, watching over him, and her genealogy cabinets dominated the far corner. He’d have to go through her research eventually but he couldn’t just yet. He literally couldn’t. The first time he’d opened a file and had seen her handwriting, the words had become too blurry to read.

  He climbed out of bed and winced immediately. His left ankle was still out of whack. Another Halloween treat. He hadn’t been wearing his air cast like he was supposed to. He leaned into the mirror and ran fingers through his shaggy auburn hair. Same skinny kid. Maybe the eyes were a little sterner. Maybe he’d burned off some naiveté and gullibility.

  Grief will do that to you.

  The top of a blond head passed his window. Yeah. It was Zef, all right. Probably home from another grope-fest with Kate Usher. It wrecked Jason every time Zef left the house because Zef would be with her—kissing her, holding her… not deserving her.

  He’d been given a vision of Kate. About six weeks ago, on the night of the Spirit Dance. They had touched for the first time and a golden energy had surged between them. They had swapped their Gifts, somehow, giving Jason glimpses of the future, of Kate in her wedding dress walking up the aisle to him. Jason had told no one but his friend Joey about that vision. He would never tell Kate. To tell her the future might prevent it from happening, right? Who understood how this stuff worked? He couldn’t risk it. He kept it to himself but replayed the vision over and over. Her white dress and the aisle of the Old Dutch Church.

  Kate was The One.

  Except… she was with Zef.

  Zef was fumbling with his keys at the front door, grousing to himself. That was good. Kate wasn’t a drinker. If Zef was drunk then he’d been out with Eddie Martinez and the Sleepy Hollow Boys. Zef must have dropped his keys on the mat because he began cursing loudly. It was funny but worrisome. Zef might wake his father and that wouldn’t be good for anybody.

  Jason had been thunderstruck when Hadewych Van Brunt had proclaimed himself half-owner of 417 Gory Brook Road. As per Eliza’s will, Hadewych had been named guardian of Jason’s person and estate. But how had he added his name to the title of the house? Eliza would never have allowed that. The Van Brunts had arrived with a jumble of boxes and a van full of thrift-store furniture. Jason couldn’t stop them from moving in.

  Necessity had dictated the living arrangements. The house only had three bedrooms. Eliza and Jason had used the back downstairs bedroom as storage. That room went to Zef. Hadewych moved into the master suite on the second floor, formerly Jason’s room. Jason had loved his grand view of the Hudson River but he couldn’t let Hadewych take Eliza’s bedroom. Oh, no. The idea made him sick. Besides, Eliza’s room had a secret safe behind a panel in the wall. Jason thought he might need it. Hadewych had inspected the master suite, had tut-tutted over Jason’s “incompetent paint job” and the “ugly stain on the ceiling”, but had consented to “make do.” He’d hired a locksmith and had put a strong bolt on the door. Jason had countered by installing a bolt on his own. The living room and kitchen remained neutral ground.

  One big happy family.

&nbs
p; The front door opened. Zef must have recovered the key and/or his fine motor skills. Charley trembled. Jason tried to soothe her but she squirmed in his arms, barking at the creak of floorboards, at the clatter of a key ring hitting the breakfast table, at the pop of the refrigerator door.

  “It’s okay, Baby.” He stroked her black fur soothingly. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  She barked like a mad thing.

  “Shut up, you little rat,” Zef shouted.

  Jason shot to his feet, propelled by anger. He set Charley down, unbolted the door and limped into the kitchen, stabbing a finger at Zef’s chest. “Don’t talk to her like that.”

  “Or what? I’m sick of her. Yap yap yap yap yap yap—”

  “She’s scared. She doesn’t like you being here.”

  Zef slammed the refrigerator. “I don’t like it either. But we’re here. And she’s giving me a headache.”

  “Sure it’s not a hangover?”

  Zef balanced three green cans of Heineken and held a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his armpit. “Mind your own business.” He took one belligerent step. Charley snarled and jumped at him. Zef lost his balance, which was already iffy. He saved the bottle of Jack but fumbled the Heinekens. The cans hit the floor. One split a seam and sprayed. Zef reached for the poodle. She bit his fingers. He swatted her rump and she squealed.