Sleepy Hollow: Bridge of Bones

by Richard Gleaves

  The household servants had set a fire in the hearth for her comfort and she sat close to it counting out small gold coins upon a lap-board. I hid in the shadows, hoping she might drop a coin and I could retrieve it for myself. One of her servants, a West Indian girl, carried a snowy log into the room and set it on the fire. It began to hiss and pop, the snow melted, and the fire sputtered out. Agathe cursed as I had never heard her do before. She stood, spilling all the gold, and slapped the idiot girl across the face. The girl ran and my grandmother muttered to herself, searching for match and tong to no avail. When she was not looking, I crept forward and took for myself one of the gold pieces. Then something remarkable occurred. My grandmother sighed, knelt before the fireplace, reached for the logs, and her right hand caught afire. Flame blossomed and coiled about her wrist.

  I gasped and cried out.

  “Shhh. Don’t be afraid, my Dylan,” she said, beckoning.

  “Your hand,” I managed, pointing to the miracle. She raised her palm. Flame sat cupped in it. Tendrils of it twisted, blue and yellow, casting the shadow of her fingers upon the ceiling and walls. She tossed the flaming ball into the fireplace. It landed among the logs and they roared back to life.

  “Lock the door,” she said.

  I obeyed. She pointed to the floor and I sat, waiting breathlessly. This was magic, this was secret knowledge, and I hungered for it. She made another ball of flame. It simply appeared in the palm of her hand. It danced and flickered. It climbed her arm and wreathed her head, casting her wrinkled face into dark silhouette. She shrugged it and left it hovering in air, then let it perch upon her wrist as if she were a falconer.

  “This is the Van Brunt Gift. Bestowed by my Horseman. It is a sign of strength. It will be your gift as well, soon, and your children’s forever afterwards.”

  “Why does it not burn you?” I asked.

  “Why should it?” she said, peering down at me and frowning. “Do I deserve to be burned?”

  “No,” I replied immediately.

  “Then I am safe from the fire. Do you deserve to be burned, my Dylan?”

  I shook my head.

  “Show me,” she said.

  She knelt and offered the flame to me. I thought of Moses and the bush that burned yet was not consumed. It seemed to me that I was seeing the hand of God and the hand was my grandmother’s. I reached for the flame and took it. I pulled back at once, crying out with pain, wagging my fingertips. The fire caught my sleeve. I could not rid myself of it, as if I clutched burning tar. The pain intensified. I ran from the room, out of doors, and plunged my hand into the snow.

  Grandmother laughed at this.

  When I returned, she was sitting again and had resumed her counting. The fire behind her crackled even more brightly than before. She beckoned. I did not fear her, because I knew she loved me. She had said often that she had invested all her hopes in me. She had said that I was HER son, even more than Brom, for I had more of her in me. She took my hand and kissed my burned fingers, which had blistered terribly. Her eyes went dark. She grasped my hand, fiercely, so that the pain tore through it again. I could not pull away. I fell to my knees. She would not let go. The blisters broke, and a rivulet of lymph ran down my arm.

  “You deserved to be burned, my Dylan. Didn’t you?”

  I shook my head, frantically, tears coming.

  “Your conscience knows, Dylan. You deserved to be burned. Say it.”

  “I deserved to be burned,” said I.

  “Again!”

  “I DESERVED TO BE BURNED!”

  She released my hand. I lay panting, weeping, but I met her gaze. She turned her palm.

  “The gold piece,” she said.

  I nodded and brought the stolen coin from my pocket. She took it and raised it to the light.

  “You cannot wield the flame with guilt in your heart, son. Try, and it will devour you. Do you understand?” I nodded. “A Van Brunt should not be so weak,” she said, her voice a dagger of ice.

  “I’m sorry I took the gold, Grandmother. I’m sorry I was bad. I will be good from now on. Don’t be ashamed of me.”

  She frowned and laid the gold coin on her lap-board. She shook her head, sadly. “I’m not ashamed that you took the gold. I’m ashamed that you felt the guilt.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “Dylan’s Tale: Part Two”

  The Horseman came for me within hours. I was walking through the woods between Woolfert’s Roost and the future site of my father’s stone manor house. The house would eventually stand on what had been old Baltus’ pumpkin field—the land where I had found my grandfather’s head. Father had chosen the spot for its view of the Hudson River. “Knoll” was to be a grand mansion in the Gothic revival style but at the time the mansion was but a few foundations of Van Brunt stone. I had become fond of the place already, the idea of it, and I spent many a night alone in a shack on the property. My mother disapproved. She would have me sleep in the room across from hers in our townhouse. But I was fifteen and did not answer to her.

  I kept a bottle of spirits hidden in the crook of two walnut trees, near old Baltus’ grave. I thought he would approve of the gesture. I had stopped along my way to fetch it out. At the moment the first pull of liquor touched my throat, I heard a ghastly, inhuman laugh. I was not alone in the woods. Had God sent the Horseman after me? Had I sinned that terribly?

  I ran through the wood and found the field where Knoll was to be built. The outline of the foundations was barely discernable beneath the snow. An apparition stood there. Though I have seen him many times since, I shall never forget my first glimpse. Gaunt in moonlight, headless, exuding power and malice. A magic thing in the land of the ordinary.

  The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. What chills those words evoke.

  It charged at me, hatchet raised.

  I stood transfixed, unable to move, unable to even imagine escape. This was the servant of God, after all, sent to strike down sinners. I hurled the bottle from my hand, ashamed that I had become a drunkard as Baltus had been. It shattered against the foundations of Knoll.

  I stretched out my arms and awaited judgment.

  A piercing white light broke the darkness. The Horse reared.

  “Not my Dylan!” cried Agathe, appearing from the wood. She held a skull in her hand. It shone brightly as a diamond. And in that moment I understood. The Horseman did not serve God, he served my grandmother. Perhaps in that moment I came to see Agathe and God as one and the same.

  The unholy spirit fought her command. A foreleg of the demon horse struck my head with such power that I fell backwards with a cry and knew no more. I carry the scar to this day. A slight indentation in my temple, barely noticeable. In my days of courting I was told that when I am angry the patch of insulted skull bone will stand out in a disturbing manner. I have never had occasion to see this phenomenon, however, as I am generally well-pleased whenever I pass a mirror.

  After the Horseman struck me down, I fell into a deep sleep and did not awaken for many weeks. Agathe told my parents that bandits had attacked me at Knoll. I did not contradict her. When alone, my grandmother confessed to me the reason for the Horseman’s attack. She had not sent him. A terrible Curse ruled the world of magic and struck down any who discovered a witch. By revealing her power, she had marked me for death.

  “You are my grandson. I didn’t think the Curse would claim you. But no harm has been done. You will be a witch yourself, now.”

  Indeed. To my horror and fascination I discovered that I, too, could summon the flame. Yet though I was able to produce it, I could not control it as Agathe could. I always felt searing pain. My skin would become red and fearful. I avoided using my Gift and still do to this day.

  My mother felt that the incident at Knoll vindicated her warnings against my shack and insisted I stay in the Townhouse. I refused and asked to live with Agathe instead. Mother reluctantly agreed. Katrina could never command me and she knew it.

  Father playfu
lly offered to buy me a home in Beekmantown, knowing the mere suggestion would make Agathe furious. He enjoyed challenging her now and again. Beekmantown, the area south of the Philipse Mills and subdividing the former holdings of the Philipse family, was the pet project of Agathe’s despised rival Cornelia Beekman. Cornelia was mistress of Philipse Manor—Beekman Manor, now. In the days after our American Revolution, the Beekman family had outbid Agathe and husband Hermanus for the parcel, which included all lands from the border of our quarry south to Wildey Swamp.

  “And now she’s too prominent to kill,” Agathe would say privately, with regret.

  Yet Cornelia had suffered setbacks after the death of her husband. After the building of the Great Erie Canal the Philipse Mill no longer profited. Cornelia had been forced to sell the land piecemeal, creating what is now known as North Tarry-Town. This is why, my Cornelius, there are no streets named for our family in what is today the village proper. No Van Brunt Avenue, no Bones Boulevard. Cornelia’s name runs down the center of town as do those of her extended family, in Beekman Street, Cortlandt Street, DePeyster Street, and Clinton Street. This was a lesson Agathe regretted bitterly and passed on to me. I pass it to you.

  Look to family.

  Agathe speculated in property as a matter of course. Once we lived together, she brought me into these dealings by way of teaching me how to use the power of the Horseman.

  This is how it was done. A cut was made, on one’s hand or arm. The blood would be dripped upon the skull and the command would be given: Rise Headless and Ride. The fiend would then await a name and the person so named would be killed.

  She refused to reveal how such a spirit had come under her command, saying only that she had possessed the skull since girlhood and had learned to harness its power. I cannot forget the first night she brought it out and let me hold the thing. Even the most ordinary skull is cause enough for discomfort, but this relic pulsed with an eldritch energy I had never experienced before. I held it to starlight and searched its empty eye sockets for answers. Who were you? What binds you? The thing remained mute to my queries.

  Blood, Agathe explained, is the key. She had learned the trick from a witch. Mother Hulda, the Witch of the Woods, who had sheltered Agathe when she had nothing. Old Hulda had passed on this secret knowledge.

  “Blood is water which flows, Dylan. Blood is salt which binds. Blood is iron which imprisons. Blood is communion. Blood is magic.”

  I could taste blood in my mouth as she spoke, as a wolf after a hunt, fed but unsatisfied. “Go on. I want to learn everything.”

  She slid the skull back into its velvet pouch, locked it inside a box of iron, and hung the key around her own neck. “I will tell you my secrets someday, but not yet.”

  “Someday” was her maddening refrain, then and in all the years ahead.

  Someday.

  The word gnaws at me still. The someday that I was promised. The someday that I was denied. The someday my father stole from me.

  In the summer of 1836, Father took me down to Manhattan by steamship. An hour into our journey he brought me to the railing and we inhaled deeply.

  “Smell that?” said Brom.

  I scowled. The wind from the south smelled of shit and the rot of animals. “God, what a stink. Is it a charnel house?”

  “No,” says Father, “it’s New York.”

  We disembarked at the lumber basin off Norton’s cove and stepped onto Forty-second Street. This disappointed me. That far north one could hardly tell one had entered a city. It might as well have been Albany. A rivulet of brown water crossed the thoroughfare at Ninth Avenue. Inspecting it, I understood the source of the terrible odor.

  “Don’t step in that,” said Brom.

  I stepped gingerly over the foul tendril. A trio of young men walked past, amused by my distaste. They plashed through the sewer filth, as if thereby proving their manhood.

  “When the Dutch ruled here,” father said as we walked, “these were clean Indian springs. Now the horses won’t even drink from them. South of fourteenth street the stink is enough to cause any decent man to vomit.”

  The wind changed, gusting from the south again, and I had to agree. The stench was like the spirit of death passing over the Israelites. I searched the doors of passing townhouses for any sign of lambs’ blood.

  “But to me,” said father, “it is the scent of money. The people here have had enough. The odor, the yellow fever, the dysentery, the fires that can’t be put out. This past December near a thousand buildings were gutted. No water could be found. They even tried to saw through the ice of the East River. They saved the town only by exploding casks of gunpowder in the path of the blaze.”

  I nodded. I had heard of the Great Fire. “So you plan to ship water to the city?”

  “In a way,” said Brom. We had reached the rise of Murray Hill. He pointed to a field. “They’re planning a receiving reservoir right here. And another up by the farms at Eighty-sixth Street. The water will be coming from the Croton River.”

  I knew Croton. It lay several miles north of Tarry-Town.

  “How?” I asked.

  “Can you guess?”

  I looked around. The line of the Harlem Railroad cut the hill nearby.

  “Train?”

  “No. The railroad will not reach Westchester for a long time. We’re going to build a tunnel. A tunnel of brick, dropping every so often, so that gravity can do the work.”

  “A forty mile tunnel?”

  “Underground all the way. Right beneath Tarry-Town. Few people know of it yet. But surveying has begun. Your grandmother has bought land along the Gory Brook. This is our fortune, made. I shall want you to run the brickyard.”

  I swelled with pride. This was an awesome responsibility. “I can do it. I will make you proud, sir.”

  A carriage arrived and father left for a meeting with city planners. I asked to remain and explore. I traveled north but regretted it. There was little to see north of Forty-second Street, only the Deaf and Dumb Asylum and a scattering of public cemeteries.

  On the return voyage I chanced to fall into conversation with an extraordinarily pleasant man in his fifties. He spoke to me about the importance of adventuring while young, of his days at sea and in Europe. As pleasant as I found the exchange, I was frankly at a loss to understand why a sixteen-year-old boy should so animate a man of such advanced years. The bell rang, signifying our arrival at Beekman’s Landing. I made my farewells and stepped onto shore.

  “What did you think of him?” asked my father.

  “Of whom?”

  “Washington Irving.”

  I was astonished to find that I had been speaking for the past hour with the man who had penned my family into his Legend, into notoriety.

  “That was Irving?”

  Brom laughed. “I’ve invited him to dinner.”

  And so Washington Irving came at last to Woolfert’s Roost, home of old Baltus, to dine with Brom and Katrina. Agathe did not join them. She was far too secretive and did not wish to be “written about.” I sat at fireside and watched three wary strangers become fast friends.

  Brom wagged a finger at Irving. “When I first heard that you’d written me into a book, I almost came for your head myself.”

  “I’m afraid you would have found it of little worth,” said Irving. He buttered his corn and smiled at my parents ruefully. “Forgive my staring, it’s quite extraordinary to find yourself dropped into your own tale.”

  “And are we what you might have expected?” said Katrina, her hand on Irving’s sleeve.

  “You are more beautiful and your husband more lucky.”

  Brom chortled at this. “We are forgetting someone.” He raised a glass. “To Ichabod. Wherever he is.”

  “To Ichabod,” said Irving and Katrina.

  I raised my own glass. In silent salute to another.

  To the Headless Horseman, thought I.

  Our family’s new friendship with Irving eventually became a busine
ss relationship. He purchased Woolfert’s Roost, paid an enormous sum for it, all to live in the Van Tassel farmhouse of his own imaginings. He began building his Sunnyside immediately on the bones of Woolfert’s Roost. Agathe and I moved into Beekmantown, a prospect she loathed, but it would have to do until Brom built her new house.

  Agathe was furious when the aqueduct planners placed markers right through Irving’s new purchase. The land of Woolfert’s Roost tripled in value overnight.

  “He knew,” she insisted. “He cheated us.”

  I was barely able to convince Agathe not to send the Horseman against Irving, who had indeed made a windfall from the purchase. The Van Brunts had done well ourselves. The aqueduct route passed alongside Knoll, and through other Van Brunt property. Agathe threw herself into the building of her new home, 100 Gory Brook Road. This new house also lay directly along the route of the aqueduct planners. Uniquely, it was to be built atop and adjacent to the tunnels. Brom had negotiated exclusive water access for his mother, at her insistence, as part of his construction contract. 100 Gory Brook would be the only structure on the entire route to use the aqueduct as its own indoor plumbing. The cornerstone was laid on the first of March, 1837.

  I saw Agathe use the Horseman twice that year.

  Not all whose property lay in the path of the aqueduct wanted the honor. Some local farmers chased the surveyors away, tore the markers from the earth. They forced the land to be appraised piece by piece and each transaction to be confirmed by the courts. In the years before the railroad, such rural farmers clung to home and simple pleasures. A thirsty New York City fumed at the delay, but a farmer forced to leave his home is apt to feel torn from his mother’s womb. He will shout and cry and wave fists red with blood.

  Such a one was Caesar, the son of a slave of the Philipse Mill freed in his thirtieth year. Now almost seventy, he refused to leave his stretch of hard-won land. And no one on the route could be certain of payment if the project was delayed.