Sleepy Hollow: Bridge of Bones

by Richard Gleaves

  “Everybody thinks you’re dead,” Jason stammered.

  “Never better.” Eddie blew smoke. “You look pretty dead, though. You stink too. You been swimming in shit?”

  Jason turned. “I’m leaving.”

  Eddie blocked him with a hand. “No no. She don’t like you wandering.”

  A shuddering cold breath prickled Jason’s back, as if the skulls were breathing down his spine. “Who doesn’t?”

  Eddie blew smoke through his nose. “You know who.”

  Jason made a move to his left but Eddie closed the distance, holding up a hand again.

  “Hey,” Eddie said, “Want to hear a joke?”

  Jason backed away, “No.”

  Eddie neared. He wasn’t as tall as Jason but he was intimidating even in broad daylight. Here, now, in this place, it was like having an audience with the King of Darkness himself. “I just want to tell you a joke, Buddy.”

  “I said I was…”

  Eddie caught Jason by the bicep, smiling. “It’s a good one.”

  “Let me go.”

  “It’s a good joke and you’re going to listen. Aren’t you?”

  Jason gave a tiny nod.

  Eddie blew smoke. “Knock knock.” He waited and frowned. “You’re supposed to say ‘who’s there.’”

  A tendril of smoke rose between them, from the tip of Eddie’s cigarette. Jason thought of New Year’s eve, how Eddie had stubbed one out on his neck.

  “Say it,” Eddie snarled.

  Jason played the flashlight across Eddie’s face. The eyes were black voids now. Eddie’s hand squeezed tighter.

  “Who’s there?” Jason stammered, his voice small.

  “Headless…”

  Jason winced.

  Eddie beckoned with the tip of his cigarette.

  Jason swallowed. “Headless who?”

  Eddie leaned forward, his lips an inch from Jason’s ear, his voice soft and pungent with tobacco. “Sie sterben an der Brücke…”

  Jason’s heart thumped in his chest demanding flight. His fingers found the eye sockets of one of the skulls. He swung it like a bowling ball and struck Eddie in the temple. Eddie cried out, releasing him. Jason ran for Agathe’s parlor but Eddie caught his shirt and swung him. Jason fell, scrambled under the metal table and slipped into the water channel beyond. He stood, the current breaking around his ankles. He raised the flashlight beam, keeping his pursuer in sight, dripping and cold and searching for an escape route.

  “Why are you doing this?” Jason said.

  Eddie flicked his cigarette at Jason’s face. “I’m not.”

  “What do you mean you’re not?” They circled the table of surgical instruments. Jason passed the flashlight into his left hand, grabbed the bone saw from the table and raised it, ready to defend himself.

  Eddie smiled. “What’ya going to do with that? You going to cut me, Ichabod?”

  “Just get away.”

  Eddie raised his hands. “Want to see something cool?”

  “Get back.”

  “Check it out.” The hatchet leapt from the altar and into Eddie’s grasp. He grinned and did a little ninja move with it, cocky and self-assured.

  “How did you do that?” Jason said.

  “It’s getting dark out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see.” Eddie made a sudden lurching chop, froze halfway through it, grinning as Jason flinched away. “Almost time.”

  “Almost time for what?” The flashlight threw Eddie’s shadow against the far wall. Massive and terrifying. “What happens at dark, Eddie?”

  “Clippety clop,” Eddie whispered. “Clippety clop clippety clop clippety clop clippety…”

  “What happens at dark?”

  Eddie’s face had gone blank. His hand rose to the cut on his cheek. He dug his fingernails into it. Blood appeared. No. Not blood. It was a stain of… mold.

  “Ergeben,” croaked Eddie, in a voice not his own.

  “No. No. No,” muttered Jason.

  Eddie shuddered. His eyes sunk back into his sockets and his lips drew back in a snarl. “Ergeben?” he whispered.

  The word was familiar. German for “surrender.”

  Jason made a move for the parlor but the thing-that-was-not-Eddie blocked him. Jason tagged the outstretched arm with his bone saw, drawing blood, but Eddie didn’t even register the pain. He was breathing heavily.

  “Ergeben…”

  The mold had claimed his entire face, a spreading blotch, like the rot of the hills. The flesh dripped from his cheeks, the skull showing through, crumpling, teeth spilling away… A dent formed in Eddie’s forehead, grew deeper, deeper still. His head lurched forward, losing its shape, dangling until the spine quivered, snapped, and Eddie’s head just… fell away. Rotted off, hit the floor, and rolled into the gulley, melting into the slime.

  Before Jason even knew what he was doing, fear had thrown him forward and he wriggled into the upstream water pipe, desperately trying to escape. A hand closed on his right leg but he was wet and slippery. He kicked the hand away and pulled his whole body into the pipe. The Eddie-Horseman’s hatchet struck the metal walls with a deafening clang but the Monster was too massive to follow. Jason pulled the flashlight from beneath his body and rolled over, trying to bring it up. A sharp pain tore across his arm. He had forgotten the bone saw in his hand and had dragged the blade across his own bicep.

  He cried out, laid his cheek against the metal, water striking his face, thundering into his eyes and nose.

  He dropped the saw and it washed away. He’d lost the flashlight too. He held his injured arm and pushed against the current as hard as he could, inch by inch, propelled by panic, wriggling into darkness and bleeding in the waters…

  Hadewych parked at Kingsland Point, looking for Zef. He drummed the steering wheel nervously. Was Valerie dead yet? Was Jessica's corpse burned? What would any investigation uncover? Maybe they would blame the fire on an errant bottle rocket. He pressed the glowing circle of the car lighter to his cigarette. It sizzled. He imagined the women's charred bodies, Jessica's long coal-black leg bones, a puddle of melted plastic beneath Valerie's chin.

  He rolled down the window, blowing smoke, and watched the party go by. Salsa music blared. People danced.

  All these happy families. He boiled, just looking at them. Can you hear my thoughts now, Agathe? You were right. Get rid of them all. Burn them off the face of the globe. All the normals. All the fat, happy, fornicating brood of them.

  But his spirits lightened as his son approached. His son. His, not hers. Not hers, not ever. Not ever again.

  I killed my boy's mother.

  I killed her.

  “Good for me,” he whispered.

  Zef climbed into the car. “Let's go home,” he said, his voice strangely resolute. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Home sounds good.” Hadewych backed out. As he waited in traffic, he noticed a blond man and his blonde wife pass, a blond boy dangling between them like a suspension bridge binding them together, connecting them to each other. A family. All in summer white. The sight made him want to be rotting in his tomb, eyes shut to it all, just another ghost to stalk the Hollow.

  He stuck his hand out the window and, quite casually, dropped a ball of fire into the bone-dry grass.

  Valerie ripped a length of fabric from her pillowcase and wet it in the bathroom sink. She tied it across her valve, filtering the air as best she could. The sudden cold humidity made her cough, clutching the porcelain. A layer of white smoke clung to the ceiling, as if the world were upside down and the fog were rolling in. She climbed into the shower, fully dressed, and soaked herself. She made sodden footprints into the next room, gathered the duvet, and gave it a shower too, wrapping herself in a bag of wet feathers. She tried the bedroom doorknob and scalded her hand. She spun circles. The window was barred and the smoke would kill her even if the fire didn’t get through the door. Her valve gave her no protection. It wa
s like having an easy-access portal to her lungs, a portal that had forced her to avoid flowers, perfume, and aerosol paint cans.

  But especially smoke.

  She’d have to get the door open or suffocate. She didn’t care much about dying. She was a spiritual being and would move to a higher plane. But Hadewych could not be allowed to win.

  She raised a hand, closing her eyes, trying to snag the door with her Gift. Her powers had been strong during the fight with Hadewych. Her adrenaline and panic had broken through the barriers she’d erected—the barriers of guilt keeping her weak her entire adult life. She had to break those barriers again, but how? She blinked. The room had grown hot, the smoke pouring like water from the top of the door. Valerie coughed and coughed, sweating in her shroud. She closed her eyes, face fierce with concentration.

  Please, she thought, pulling at the wood with her mind. Let me out.

  She saw her father’s surprise on the day he’d come to collect her—on the day all the windows had flown up and he had known the little witch. Her mother’s horror afterward. (“He saw you? Oh, Valerie! Your father saw you?”)

  Let me out.

  She saw the coffin lid close on her father. (“I know the embalmer tried to cover the gunshot wound, but… No. It really should be a closed coffin.” “Whatever you say Mrs. Maule.”)

  Let me out.

  She saw a little girl banished to her room by a grieving mother. (“Oh, why weren’t you careful? How could you curse your father? Didn’t I teach you anything?”) A dark-haired girl with a seashell in her hand, huddled in a corner of her closet… and her mother in the next room, playing the Danse Macabre.

  Let me out, please.

  LET ME OUT!

  Her bedroom door groaned. Valerie didn’t open her eyes. She pulled harder.

  It wasn’t my fault, Mama. I do not accept your guilt. I do not accept it.

  The door shook violently, like an animal throttling the bars of its cage.

  I’m a good person. I deserve happiness.

  She raised her hands, making claws of them.

  I’m through being afraid.

  She closed her fists. The door screamed and the wood broke inward, down the center, splitting.

  I’M THROUGH BEING AFRAID.

  She pulled and the pieces collapsed onto the floor. Then so did she, as the tide of black choking death rushed in.

  Jason’s bleeding arm throbbed. He tightened his tourniquet—a strip torn from his shirt—wincing. He pressed his wet back to the belly of a rusted water tank, trying not to make a sound. Stars hung above, a small porthole of stars—a ventilation shaft. Could it be the one he passed every morning when he biked to school? That would mean he was underground about… six blocks from the house. But which direction?

  He couldn’t get out through the shaft. He had no way of climbing it. He fought to keep his teeth from chattering. He felt as he had on New Year’s—trapped under the stairs in a mound of snowy trash, cold and alone. He’d lost the flashlight. Could he hide until morning? Did Eddie’s head grow back again when the sun came up? The memory of the rotted thing lurching away and striking the stone made him heave.

  Two eyes peered at him from the darkness. Jason gasped as a raccoon chittered and ran between his legs. Something black and leather-winged broke across the stars. He felt a growing jangle of disorientation and panic. He raised his hands, feeling his way as he pressed onward, the feeble light receding behind him. His foot snagged a chain and he tipped forward, jolting his wrist against flat stone ahead. He felt along the seams of the wall, his breathing loud in his own ears, loud as the throb of his heart in his arm, loud as the angry darkness shouting in his face.

  He leaned forward. He felt lightheaded and his right hand was sticky. He pressed his tongue to the palm, tasting coppery blood. He was bleeding badly.

  He heard a footstep, somewhere behind. Two. Three. Heavy footsteps. Or were they ahead? He couldn’t tell. He hurried along. He followed the wall, tracing his finger down the groove of cold mortar, searching for a passage, a door, a light switch. His feet followed, cautiously, shuffling sideways, the skin of his calf alert for obstacles. His ears felt enormous, as if their pupils had gone wide to see the tiniest glimmer of sound. His nose ran. So did his eyes. He could still taste his own blood on his tongue. Like a wolf after a hunt. But he was the hunted.

  The footsteps intensified, echoing from left and right and above and below.

  The shark is coming. I bled in the waters. The shark is coming. Run. Run.

  But he couldn’t run if he couldn’t see. He heard a high shriek in the distance, like the cry of a bat but strangely endless, a thread of high-pitched sound. His fingers closed on a railing. His calf bumped stairs. He climbed the stairs, sideways. His fingers lost the wall but his eyes woke to a distant light, a sparkle in the distance glinting off a trickle of water down an endless red-brick tunnel. He had found the aqueduct itself, the channel northward to Croton, southward to New York City.

  A way out? He ran, his path unimpeded. The wailing sound intensified, like a tiny banshee singing in the shower. It came from… ahead, where the light was. The brick reddened as he neared. The sound and the light came from a side passage and a room…

  Jason stumbled through the door, tripped, and fell on a bare mattress. He blinked in the grey light of a bare bulb. The mattress lay on the stone floor of a low-ceilinged room. An extinguished lantern lay with a yellow flashlight, next to a improvised tinfoil ashtray, syringes in plastic, and some glass vials with medical labels. A music player with speakers sat nearby. That was the source of the wailing. It was “Sherry,” sung by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. A set of rusting barbells lay next to a team photo of the Sleepy Hollow Horsemen. Jason snagged a bit of foil from the floor. The wrapper of a protein bar.

  This was where Eddie lived. Where Eddie had been living since his disappearance.

  Jason rose and stumbled back to the aqueduct tunnel. His breath stopped and he froze. The footsteps were coming. Something was down there, in that direction, coming up the tunnel fast. He returned to the room, looking for a weapon. Bright blood soaked his forearm like a red gauntlet. He was in bad shape. He circled the mattress and found plastic sheeting hanging in front of an inner door, split down the middle like the entrance to a butcher’s backroom. He seized the yellow flashlight and tested it. It worked. He slipped through and found another wall of plastic. He pushed deeper, hoping to find an exit or at least a place to hide. He kept the flashlight off. He caught his foot on something and hopped it, hitting his shoulder against the wall. He thrashed through another wall of plastic…

  And the stench hit him.

  The overpowering stench of rot and decay and garbage punched him in the face with a fistful of sick. He bent double and thought he would vomit but his stomach was empty. Where was he? He was afraid to know. He tried to breathe through his mouth. In the other room, Frankie Valli screamed like something in a slaughterhouse. Jason’s foot bumped an object on the floor and flies flew up. He batted them away. He raised the flashlight, debating with himself, but he had to know. He clicked it on.

  The vacant eye socket of a rotted horse stared up at him. Daredevil, the dead stallion from New Year’s Eve. It was almost a skeleton, now. A skeleton wrapped in shadows and vermin. For some bizarre reason it wore a bridle, a bridle tied off to a pipe on the wall. Why tie up a dead horse?

  Then it twitched.

  Jason’s shoulder struck something and he whirled. A dead face screamed at him silently. A severed head. Many heads, strung on a length of rope like a bandolier of hand grenades. He recognized three of them.

  Carlos, Piebald, and McCaffrey.

  He wiped his nose with a blood-drenched hand. The horse let out a ghastly bray. The flies became frenzied, peppering the air. Jason flailed at them. His fingers caught a chain and something clanged with a deep resonant sound. He gasped and looked up. Agathe’s bell-chain, which meant…

  Jason grabbed the pipe and braced his feet,
climbing. His toes found the metal braces. The flashlight fell and clattered, shining in the eyes of the horse, making sparks of the flies.

  In the other room, Frankie Valli’s screams were cut off abruptly, as if he’d been felled by the butcher. The Horseman had heard the bell-note. Jason climbed frantically, clinging to the pipe. He was about thirty feet up now. His head struck wood. He had to break through. He had to—or else…

  …or else he would die, and his head would join the Horseman’s arsenal, to swing from the bandolier on the wall.

  The horse made a ghastly cry of recognition and happiness. The Eddie-Horseman burst into the room below.

  Jason tried to batter through, striking the wood with his good left hand while his throbbing right clung to the pipe.

  The pipe shuddered. The Horseman was climbing.

  Jason braced himself and bashed his shoulder against the wood.

  The nails gave a little.

  The pipe began to separate from the wall, the weight of both of them was too much for the bracing.

  Jason struck the wood again, again—

  The nails groaned

  The boards flew upwards.

  Jason tried to struggle through but found another barrier blocking his ascent.

  The Horseman was on him now, snatching at his feet.

  Jason swung a board, defending himself.

  The pipe groaned and gave a sudden jolt, almost pitching them to the ground.

  Jason struck at the Monster again. “Get off me! Get off me!” he screamed at it, beating at the strong hand that reached at him from the dark. “Get off!” He was hysterical now.

  The pipe lurched. Jason wedged his foot between the pipe and the wall and gained purchase. He pushed.

  Wood broke aside.

  He wriggled through the gap.

  His back hit something and he fell backwards as a pair of doors split wide, dropping him onto the floor of… Zef’s bedroom.

  He lay on his back, breathing hard, and watched with horror as the Horseman emerged from the hole in the closet floor. He seized the leg of Jason’s jeans, dragging him inexorably back into stinking darkness, back into the grave.