Sleepy Hollow: Bridge of Bones

by Richard Gleaves

  “Jessica Bridge.”

  The death’s-head grin broadened, somehow, and a thread of black and green liquid, shiny as a horsefly’s wings, trickled from the gap of a missing eyetooth.

  “You will follow my commands. You will take no one else but her. No one. Only Jessica Bridge. Do you understand?” He shook the lantern. “Do you understand?”

  The face lurched forward and struck the glass, leaving a red splash there. It wobbled and settled, smiling and nodding.

  “Jessica Bridge,” hissed the face.

  “Yes.” Hadewych raised the lantern a little. “Jessica Bridge.”

  The red face tipped backwards and the jaw cracked wide. Hadewych recoiled. Something pink and wet writhed inside that mouth. The nub of a new tongue, salivating as if it could taste the name.

  “Jessica Bridge.”

  “Jessica Bridge.”

  “Jessica Bridge.”

  “Jessica Bridge.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “A Murder of Ice”

  Kate hadn’t stopped to pull her coat on. It whipped over one shoulder as if waving Jason off.

  “Please talk to me,” Jason said, following her through the parking lot.

  Kate ignored him. A red-headed security man opened the rear door of a black SUV and she slipped into the back seat, draped her coat over her lap, and slammed the door herself. The guard’s raised hand brought Jason up short.

  Kate rolled her window down. “Red?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “This is Jason Crane. Have you had a good look at him?”

  “That’s an affirmative.”

  “If he ever comes within ten feet of me again I want you to tase him.”

  “Will do.”

  The tinted window swallowed her, the SUV’s engine purred, and the car pulled away.

  Jason laughed weakly. “She was joking, right?”

  The redhead produced his taser and thumbed a switch. A spark jumped between the contacts. His eyes narrowed, like Howdy Doody channeling Clint Eastwood. “You’re welcome to find out.”

  Jason raised his hands in surrender and walked away, back towards the tent. The orchestra was still playing, but maybe the event was finally wrapping up. The cars in the lot had thinned some.

  He was sweating and felt flushed. A coughing fit hit him. He spat phlegm over the low wall and onto the frozen water of the moat.

  “Better out than in!” John McCaffrey stood on the stone bridge, leaning on the balustrade. He raised a hand in greeting. “Come warm up.” The funeral director tossed Jason a minibar bottle of bourbon, which Jason caught with two hands. “You’re twenty-one, right? Put hair on your chest.”

  Jason drained the little bottle. His lungs burned and his sinuses cleared. Then he got a bourbon backdraft and coughed uncontrollably.

  “Damn, kid. That don’t sound good.” McCaffrey offered up a pack of Camels. “Want a smoke?”

  Jason shook his head. “You’ve been out here all night?”

  “Oh, sure. I like the music. And I got nowhere else to be.” He flicked his cigarette. It arced over the balustrade and winked on the ice below. He lit another. “Why ain’t you inside with the big shots?”

  “I’m ready to go home.”

  McCaffrey nodded. “We ain’t cut out for the Richie Rich set, kid. We’re way too smart for ’em. What kind of idiot blows that kind of dough on a dumb party, anyways?”

  Jason kept mum.

  McCaffrey blew smoke. “Want to hear a funny?”

  “That’s okay.”

  “So there was this blonde funeral director. And a widow come in saying, ‘Oh dear, my husband’s laid out in a blue suit and he looks so much better in black. Go find me a black suit.’ You with me? So the next day…”

  A light caught Jason’s attention. The windows of one of the grain silos blazed with cold white fire. Jason recognized that light. He’d seen it in a vision. In the storage unit. It was the light of the Horseman’s Treasure.

  “…and the widow says, ‘It does fit nice. What a miracle from heaven!’ ‘Oh, that weren’t a miracle,’ says the blonde. ‘I just swapped the heads.’” McCaffrey brayed with laughter. “Get it? She just swapped the heads! Want to hear another?”

  “McCaffrey,” Jason whispered, pointing across the field. “What woods are those?”

  “That’s the Rockefeller State Park Preserve.”

  Jason whirled. “Get inside.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Just go!”

  With all that had happened, Jason had forgotten his fears of that afternoon. If Hadewych had taken the Treasure from its hiding place, had brought it here… there could only be one reason. Somebody’s going to die.

  But who? Who would die?

  “What the hell?” muttered McCaffrey. Jagged cracks suddenly appeared in the ice below, joining each other, snapping. The ice trembled with tension.

  “Get down,” Jason said. He pulled McCaffrey sideways, and together they fell behind the balustrade. The shards of ice launched into the air like a murder of crystal crows.

  “What’s going on?” shouted McCaffrey, rolling onto his back.

  Jason rose to his knees.

  He saw her.

  Jessica wore a long coat of emerald wool; a red purse hung across one shoulder. She walked across the parking lot, her head down, deep in thought.

  “Jessica!” he shouted, but either the distance or the music kept her from hearing. The shards of ice swarmed in midair, gathering together. Jason staggered to his feet and ran for her. As he reached the drive, he lost his footing on a patch of ice and slid helplessly. He fell onto his hip and scrambled to recover.

  The pavement’s so icy, he thought. They plowed it but… didn’t they salt? Oh, God. Of course they didn’t. You’d never salt the ground of a working farm…

  He found his footing again. “Jessica!”

  She heard him finally, and turned. And then, as if on cue, all hell broke loose.

  Behind Jessica, the window of a sedan exploded. Others followed. Shrill car alarms whooped and bleated and hiccupped hysterically. An electrical cable snapped and showered the cars with sparks. Jason recoiled and covered his face, gnats of fire biting the back of his neck. The fallen cable thrashed like a pinned snake, wriggling and hissing among the cars, spitting death.

  Then a power transformer blew, sparking on the roof of Stone Barns, and darkness collapsed around them, enshrouding everything. The music stopped. Shouts rose from the tent. The moon was in ascendance now.

  And by moonlight, Jason could see them. Figures shuffling across the snow. Figures that left no footprints. The black shades of dead men. Fireflies drifted from the deep woods and coalesced, adding to the ranks. Hundreds of spirits marched up the hill, surrounding the castle from all directions.

  The Army of the Horseman had come.

  Hadewych saw them too. He raised the Devil’s lantern and fixed his eyes to the shadowed sockets of the grinning thing inside.

  “What are you doing?” he spat. “Answer me!”

  The skull’s teeth separated and clacked together, as if to bite the hand that had fed it.

  Broken glass danced in the air, partnering with spinning shards of ice. The electrical cable struck at Jason, crackling like fireworks, and a burned rubber smell filled the air.

  Jason circled around the cable, jumped it, but came down on his bad ankle. He bit his lip and winced but pressed on, limping between the cars. He found Jessica crouched with her hands over her ears, trying to shut out the deafening alarms.

  “He’s coming!” Jason shouted.

  Jessica blinked at him. “Who’s coming?”

  He pointed upward, at the figure gathering from glass and ice.

  “He’s coming to kill you!”

  The janitorial closet had fallen dark, but the moon still lit one tiny window above. Zef saw well enough though. Well enough to do what he had to. A pair of industrial mops leaned against the wall, heads hanging, as if w
ith sorrow.

  That pair of mops will be the last thing you ever see, he thought.

  Zef had considered suicide before, but he’d never attempted it. Now… he had no choice. He saw no way out. His life was over, and he’d rather die now in this closet than face his father tomorrow.

  “No one will care anyway,” he whispered to himself. “You’re a monster.”

  He heard distant car alarms, and hesitated. Something was going on in the parking lot. But that wasn’t his problem. Soon he would have no problems. Never again.

  He uncapped the plastic jug of cleaning fluid and lifted it to his lips. The stench of ammonia made his eyes water. He wondered how long his death would take, how badly he would suffer. Who the hell cared anymore? Who the hell cared?

  He counted. One. Two. Three. He tipped the jug. The liquid hit his lips, his tongue.

  A kernel of fear popped in his chest. But it wasn’t fear for himself. It was fear for—

  Go! Quick! Danger! Help! Come! Now! She needs you!

  Zef spat the liquid out and threw aside the bottle.

  “Mom!” he cried, gagging and choking. He wiped his scalded mouth, leapt to his feet, and ran from the room.

  A hand rose from the whirlwind of crystal, and a hatchet flew into its grasp. Jason grabbed Jessica and pulled her away, diving over a retaining wall. They fell down the embankment together, legs and arms flailing, elbows piercing the snow and punching mud. Jason’s back struck the side of the greenhouse with a jarring whump but Jessica found her feet. She staggered on the uneven slope, heels sinking, brushing mud from her clothes with a look of angry indignation.

  “Great!” she shouted. “Now I can’t take the dress back.”

  She must have seen something reflected in the greenhouse wall then, something rising behind her, because she whirled and backed towards Jason. The glass of the greenhouse shivered and exploded outward, a thousand tiny fangs slashing at Jason and Jessica as they flew past, adding just a trace of their blood to the headless figure that stood above without a steed, hatchet raised, his crystal body sparkling in the moonlight.

  “Only Jessica!” barked Hadewych. “I said only Jessica!”

  “Jason Crane!” hissed the bloody face.

  “Jason Crane!”

  “Jason Crane!”

  “Jason Crane!”

  “Jason Crane!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “The Battle of Pocantico Hills”

  “Settle down, everyone!” Usher shouted, setting aside the dead microphone. “It’s just a power outage. I’m sure the staff is working on it.”

  The tent was pitch black except for the yellow spots, which were apparently plugged into some alternate source of power. Behind the dessert station, a crème brûlée chef lit his butane torch and held it high, providing a sickly light. The banquet director muttered discreetly and two waiters appeared with flashlights. The beams glinted off spectacles and necklaces and the sequins of party dresses. The heating system had died, the musicians had stopped, and the tent was uncomfortably silent but for the ticking of the great clock above. Someone stepped on a balloon, bringing a gasp and a few chuckles.

  The crowd huddled together by instinct. A bald man with spectacles trod on the hem of an elderly woman’s dress and she went down, hard, tipping a cocktail table in the process. She cried out and was answered by the distant cry of car alarms, bleating like sheep that have seen a wolf. Concerned voices rose and the crowd pressed forward.

  “Easy, everyone,” said Usher. “We’ll look into it. Everybody just relax.” He gestured to the piano player, who shrugged and began Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Usher climbed down from the stage and beckoned. His men came to his side, and together they headed for the far exit.

  “Help!” Someone outside was running, slapping his hands on the side of the tent. “Help!” The slaps traveled along until the figure found a flap. It was someone Usher didn’t recognize. A man in a bolo tie. “It’s a monster! It’s a danged monster!”

  Usher pressed a hand to the man’s mouth. His Gift engaged. He saw blood and death. A circle of spirits, the swing of a hatchet.

  He snatched his hand away, breaking the connection. A murmur of panic spread among the people who had heard. Whispers traveled. Usher handed the man to security.

  “Keep him quiet.”

  Usher drew aside the flap of the tent and stuck his head into the night air. Ahead of him, a hundred eyes blinked in rhythm—the headlights of the screaming cars. And by their light he saw…

  Oh, that is just beautiful.

  He whirled, grabbing Red’s elbow. “Gather all the Appointed on my mark. Get the normals out of here. I don’t want them cursed.” Red nodded.

  “What is it?” said Mather.

  “I think we’re all going to be a bit more powerful tomorrow,” said Usher. “Where’s my daughter?”

  “She went home.”

  “Damn. She’s going to miss all the fun.” Usher loosened his tie. A knot of men and women stepped forward. Familiar faces.

  “Everybody out!” shouted Red. “Out of the building right now! Move it! Move it!” He raised his pistol and fired three shots into the air. The crowd bolted like animals, knocking over tables, chairs, and each other.

  Usher sighed, praying that no normals would die tonight.

  And if some of them do die, please tell me their checks have cleared.

  Jason grabbed the back of Jessica’s coat and pulled. The hatchet missed her neck by less than an inch. She fell against Jason and they scrambled backwards, wriggling through the shattered windows of the greenhouse. The Horseman followed, hacking at the flimsy frame, making himself an entrance. Jessica seized a terracotta pot and flung it at him, backhanded. It shattered against his chest. The shards became part of him.

  “Get to the party!” Jason said. “Go! I’ll draw him off.”

  Jessica didn’t need to be told twice. She ran for the door. The Horseman burst into the room and pursued her.

  Jason waved. “Here! It’s me you want.”

  The Horseman turned.

  Oh shit.

  Jason dove under the steel troughs, crawling across the blanket of dirt. But the Horseman was faster than he’d expected. He jumped from trough to trough, each bending beneath his weight. Hands grabbed Jason by the jacket, lifted him bodily, flung him through the shattered wall of the greenhouse. He struck the ground outside shoulder-first, clipping his head on a stone as he rolled. His vision blurred for a moment, then cleared. He rose to one knee unsteadily.

  Go. Go. Go.

  The only shelter was a nearby hay barn. He would try for that.

  But a hand made of jagged glass closed on his ankle, and he cried out in agony.

  “Jason Crane!”

  “Jason Crane!”

  “No! I need him!” cried Hadewych. “Obey me. Only Jessica Bridge!”

  The red face spat black bile.

  “Jessica Bridge…” it hissed, reluctantly.

  The Horseman released Jason, turned, and threw his hatchet at the fleeing Jessica.

  “Look out!”

  Jessica either heard Jason’s voice or his mental cry, because she lurched sideways. Still, the blunt end of the hatchet clipped her shoulder, spinning her, and she half-fell, half-rolled across the hood of a car. She found her feet and ran onward. She was halfway to safety, almost past the blinking yellow eyes of the frantic vehicles. She kicked her shoes off and ran in stocking feet. She was going to make it.

  Jason heard the cry of an animal. He whirled. A black horse broke through the tree line behind him, galloping around the hay barn. A fierce stallion. A living horse. Daredevil, the beast that had frightened Jason so much at the stables. Spirits were chasing it, corralling it, driving it. The horse was terrified and frothing. Jason spun out of its way. The Horseman climbed onto its back, digging heels of glass into the desperate creature’s shanks. The horse thrashed. The Horseman seized its mane, kicked it, and rode up the hill, closing on Jessica.

/>   Jason rose, turned, and limped after. He had to help. But something else cried out behind him. The doors of the hay barn had opened. Things moved within. Misshapen figures staggered into the moonlight.

  The Horseman was not the only ghost who could manifest.

  Zef ran past the reading room and out into the snow. He’d heard gunshots.

  “Mom! Mom!”

  He bent and grabbed a handful of snow, pressing it to his mouth to soothe his burning lips and gums. He saw Jessica running across the parking lot. A monstrous thing rode after her. Jessica jumped the electrical cable. The horse balked at it, cried out, and reared. Zef reached his mother and she drew him under her coat. They ran for the tent together. The Horseman followed.

  “No. No.” Hadewych gripped the reliquary. “Leave my son alone!” He had to stop this. Stop it now. But he had no idea how to do that. How could he put the Horseman back to sleep? Was it even possible?

  This is a nightmare. How do I wake from it?

  If the thing had stood in a cornfield, Jason would have called it a scarecrow. But this was no scarecrow. It was a nightmare, a terrifying thing of straw and mud and twisted rope, animated by some strong spirit at the Horseman’s command. It gripped Jason by one foot, dragging him towards the woods.

  Other somethings joined it.

  A something made of burlap and black plastic clutched at Jason, tried to suffocate him. Jason clawed the plastic from his face, gasping. Another something slithered from the compost bin, a creature of peelings and bones and clumps of dung. It caught him with a tentacle, wrapping itself around his other ankle.