I had to ride into town again the next day for some supplies. Katrina settled in the parlor, eyes facing the window, as soon as breakfast ended. She didn’t seem to notice when I left. I wasn’t going to be gone long but I felt a little twinge of worry.
Perhaps I should ask someone to come and sit with her when I am out. She shouldn’t be alone.
Then I shook away the thought. Katrina wasn’t fine, I couldn’t fool myself about that, but neither was her behavior potentially harmful to herself. She only sat and looked out the window. She was perfectly safe for an hour or two.
Though neither of us was eating much, Katrina and I still needed food, especially since we didn’t have the bounty from the farm. I didn’t even bother to keep the vegetable garden anymore, since a bumper crop of tomatoes or squash would only end up rotting on the vine before we ate it, and I didn’t have any desire to take the excess into town to sell. It seemed too humiliating, the most unacceptable blow to the Van Brunt legacy. Brom never would have stooped to such small change as selling a few meager vegetables in the common market.
But you’re perfectly willing to shop in that common market, I thought to myself as I selected some potatoes. People bustled all around me, some of them calling my name in greeting, but mostly they were folk I didn’t know. Sleepy Hollow wasn’t the place I’d known as a child, the place that seemed frozen under glass, where everyone knew everyone and most people were related to each other. It was growing just like the rest of the country, becoming something modern and unrecognizable.
I could have stopped to visit Sander, as I usually did, but I didn’t want to repeat the same frustrating conversation of the previous day. Sander was my friend, my only friend, and I wanted him to stay that way.
I loaded my purchases into my saddlebags and took Zacht’s reins so I could walk him until we reached the edge of the village. There were too many people about to ride even at a slow pace, though Zacht was no threat to anyone around him. My horse was nothing like his sire or grandsire. He had no fire in his eye, no wild nature. He was smart like Donar and maybe as fast as Daredevil, but I never rode him the way Brom would have. I liked his sweet nature.
I carefully weaved in and out of the crowd, raising my hand occasionally when I heard my name. As I passed the place where Schuler de Jaager’s cottage used to be I caught a whiff of rotting meat, the tang of blood, and the sulfurous curl of a freshly struck match. The combination was so repugnant and yet so familiar that I paused, and I remembered a shadow rising up before me in the forest, the same strange scents filling my nose.
Crane, I thought. But Crane couldn’t be near, couldn’t be in Sleepy Hollow. Brom had killed him and there was nothing left. He’d melted away, thwarted by Brom Bones in life and in death.
Besides, whatever shadows that held sway over Sleepy Hollow had gone away when Brom died and Schuler de Jaager disappeared. There was a road through the woods now, through places where no one would go ten years before. People didn’t fear the woods, didn’t repeat stories about ghosts and magic and Horsemen without heads.
I’d heard that there were still a few dark and unexplored places, places that hunters avoided. These men always said in loud voices that this was because there were no animals in those dark copses. But when they’d drunk a few glasses of ale and the lanterns were low they’d always whisper that they’d seen a shadow, or heard a voice without a body, or felt a cold chill on their nape, and the other men around the storyteller would nod and say the same thing happened to them.
But this wasn’t the woods. This wasn’t some shadowed corner, some remnant of the old drowsy magic that had bewitched Sleepy Hollow. This was an empty plot of land, exposed under the clear blue sky and the brightly shining sun, and there were people all around, and Crane couldn’t be near because Crane was dead.
I stared at the dirt where Schuler de Jaager’s cottage used to be, noticed that it was still gray like ash, like the day the cottage burned down a decade before. The plot still looked over the covered bridge, and the church, and the cemetery where Brom and my father and my mother lay.
The scent of sulfur grew stronger, strong enough for me to cover my mouth and nose with my free hand. I felt a touch on the back of my neck, a finger sliding over my spine. I spun around to see who it was but there was no one there.
Someone laughed, a low, malicious chuckle, very close to my ear.
Then I heard a man nearby say, “Look at the smoke! Where is it coming from?”
I turned toward the speaker, and saw him gesturing toward the sky above the road that led away from the village.
His companion shielded his eyes with his hands and said, “Looks like it’s out near the old Van Brunt place. I wonder if someone’s field is on fire.”
For a moment I stood frozen, staring at the black curl of smoke in the sky. Then I was on Zacht’s back, kicking him into a gallop, shouting for anyone in front of me to get out of my way.
It’s not the house, it’s not Katrina, everything is all right, it’s likely only a burning field just like the man said, it’s been a dry autumn and a careless ember could set a whole field of wheat afire, it’s not the house, it’s not Katrina, everything is all right, Katrina will be all right, she’ll be staring out the window just like she was when I left her an hour ago.
“Faster, faster,” I whispered to Zacht, and he pounded over the road, passing plodding wagons driven by people who turned their heads to watch us as we passed.
Katrina will be fine. She has to be fine. Even if it is the house she will have gotten out. She wouldn’t sit there and stare out the window while the house burned all around her.
But I still whispered to Zacht that he should go faster, faster, faster.
I rounded the turn of the road that led up to the drive. A small crowd of neighbors was gathered on the lawn, staring up at the house.
The Van Tassel house, the pride of Baltus Van Tassel, passed to his equally proud son-in-law Abraham Van Brunt, who’d always wanted it to be an heirloom for his son.
But his son had died, and now the house burned.
Black smoke billowed from the back of the building, and the flames seemed impossibly huge and high. There was a hungering roar, a consuming snarl, emitting from the fire, and I felt then that fire was a live thing, a predatory animal, not a benign friend that cooked our food and warmed our hands. This was a monster to be feared.
I galloped to the edge of the crowd, shouting at the people gathered there.
“Katrina! Katrina!”
One of the men shook his head. “She’s not here.”
I swung down and threw Zacht’s reins at the man, whose name I could not recall. I’d sold so much land to so many people in the last several months that all their faces blurred together.
“Where are you going?” he cried as I ran past him and the others gathered there.
I didn’t bother to answer. Did the fool think I was going to leave my grandmother in a burning house? Why had all of them gathered just to gawk? No one had even bothered to think that the fire might spread to the fields, and that they should be dampening the ground between the house and the crops.
There was no time for me to explain this to them. I needed to get to Katrina. I knew exactly where she would be.
The front door was slightly ajar, and smoke emitted through the crack. Had I left the door open when I left? Or had someone come into the house, started the fire and neglected to pull it shut?
I pushed the door further open and a rush of heat and smoke poured out, nearly knocking me flat. I staggered, then pulled my handkerchief from my pocket and used it to cover my mouth and nose as I entered the house. I didn’t need to go far. I only needed to get to the parlor.
Smoke hung from the ceilings in a thick haze, and though the actual flames hadn’t reached the front of the house yet, the heat felt like it was eating me alive. It dried out my skin and mouth in an instant, made me brittle and breakable.
If I’m breakable then Katrina is even more so, I thought as I hunched down below the thickest part of the smoke and made my way toward the parlor door.
I squinted, my eyes streaming from the smoke, my arm outstretched to push the parlor door open. But the door was already open, and I’d stumbled over the threshold before I realized it. My gaze went straight to the chair where I’d left Katrina, the place where she’d always been without fail every day for the last several months.
She wasn’t in the chair.
She wasn’t anywhere in the room.
Panic spiked through me. I rushed back to the foyer. Something shifted ominously toward the back of the house. I heard timbers cracking.
“Oma!” I called.
I rushed into the kitchen with a half-formed idea that she might be there, that the fire might even have started there because she’d tried to cook or to make tea, but the room was empty. All the other rooms on this floor were closed up, but I still checked Brom’s office, thinking that she’d gone there to be close to him.
Every moment I remained in the house the smoke increased, and the roar of the fire grew to a defiant howl. I felt that at any second the ceiling would collapse, that the whole structure would fall down around me, but I couldn’t leave, couldn’t bring myself to run like a coward when Katrina was still somewhere inside.
I ran up the stairs, calling her name, but I could hardly hear my own voice and knew she’d never hear it over the sound of the flames. The smoke was gathered at the top of the house, and I could barely see through it no matter how low I crouched. My sense memory of the house led me toward Katrina’s bedroom. When I reached the door it was closed.
I grasped the knob and screamed aloud, because it was as hot as a poker that had been sitting in the fireplace. I felt my skin scorch, the pain unlike anything I’d ever known, but I’d automatically turned the knob when I touched it and so the door swung open.
A blast of flame burst out like a cannon fire and it hit me with the same force. I fell to the floor, my clothes burning, and I rolled back and forth in a desperate attempt to put them out, no clear thought in my head except that I wanted to live, that I didn’t want to die yet.
I pushed up to all fours, my clothes still smoking, and I crawled into Katrina’s room. The walls and ceiling were aflame, and I was certain that they would collapse at any moment.
“Oma!” I called, or rather tried to call, because her name came out as a choking cough.
I tried to see through the smoke, ignoring my growing terror of being trapped in a burning room that might fall on me. I blindly moved toward the center of the room and bumped into the footboard of the bed.
The smoke eddied, and for a brief flash I saw Katrina’s stockinged feet. She lay on the bed, perfectly still.
No, I thought, and ran around to the side of the bed so I could lift her. She was so small that it was nothing to carry her even when she was at her most robust, and her lack of interest in food these last few months made her lighter than any child.
Her body was still warm, and I thought she was still breathing but I couldn’t stop to check. The headboard was on fire, and so were the pillows. She’d undone her braid so her long hair lay on the coverlet, and half of it was gone, consumed by flame.
I ran out of the room with her in my arms, her hair burning, thinking only of getting out of the house and worrying about anything else later. I didn’t want to think that she might already be dead, that she’d suffocated on the smoke as she lay in that burning room.
I picked my way blindly down the stairs, terrified of tripping and falling and hurting Katrina. I’d only taken a few steps when I heard a tremendous crashing, and the building shook, and I knew that the bedroom we’d recently escaped had collapsed, along with almost every other room in that part of the house.
Just get down the stairs, just get out of the house, you’re nearly there.
The smoke was so thick that I didn’t realize I’d reached the bottom step, and I stumbled over nothing, my heart pounding as I held Katrina tight to me. The front door was only a few feet away, still open, and beyond the frame of the doorway I saw a larger crowd gathered, all of them staring at the spectacle of my family home burning to the ground.
I staggered onto the porch, and somehow I made it down the steps and to the drive. All of the people watched me with wide eyes, none of them moving to help me at all. What was wrong with them? What had happened to the idea of helping your neighbors? Why weren’t they trying to put out the fire? Why weren’t they trying to keep the fire from spreading to their crops?
I fell to my knees and released my grip on Katrina none too gently. She rolled onto the ground, her eyes fluttering, and I felt a surge of relief. She was alive. She was still alive. I could direct my attention to the gawkers.
“Your farms are going to burn if you don’t go out and start dampening the ground,” I said. “Get out of here! Stop staring! Go save your crops!”
Several of them stared at me with drowsy eyes, almost like they were half-asleep. I noticed, with a thrum of trepidation, that Henrik Janssen was one of them. He’d never moved away, and I’d encountered him more than once since the night he attacked me, but he’d never apologized nor shown any indication that he was even aware the incident occurred. He’d been under the influence of the woods, as I’d thought, but it didn’t change the way I felt about him. I knew that deep down there was something inside him that should never come out.
“Get out of here!” I shouted, waving my arms in front of them. “If you aren’t going to help us then leave!”
A few people started, and I saw awareness in their eyes that hadn’t been there a moment before, a what-am-I-doing? knowledge.
These individuals started shouting, shaking their neighbors, indicating that they should be working to contain the fire before it affected their property. It was like watching them all wake from some shared dream. There was a sudden flurry of activity as they all ran toward their own homes.
Only Henrik Janssen remained, staring at me and at Katrina. There was something in his eyes that I hadn’t seen since that terrible night, something I’d never wanted to see again. The edges of his mouth pulled wide, spreading into something like a smile but something far too big, something too full of teeth.
“Leave,” I said. “You’re not welcome here.”
I wasn’t a child anymore, and I was taller than Henrik Janssen. I wasn’t afraid of him. I didn’t have to be afraid, and I didn’t have time for this. I needed to see to Katrina.
“Bente,” he said, and there was a kind of slithering in the way my name came out of his mouth, a sense that there was something underneath his skin that wasn’t human. “I’ve missed you so.”
My hands curled into fists. “Leave. Before I do something you’ll regret.”
“Soooo sssssweet,” he said, his eyes dancing with malice. “So sweet the way you think that you’re like Brom, that you can beat into submission anything that you don’t like. But you’re not Brom, little Bente. You’re nothing but a delicate, delicious girl under those clothes.”
I felt the knee-jerk response, the words bunching up in my throat. I’m not a girl. I’m a man, and I’ll prove it to you.
“You can’t make yourself something you’re not, Bente. I know what you are, even if some of those fools don’t. Nothing but a pale imitation of Brom Bones, always running after his ghost, always covered by his shadow.”
I’m not. I’m not. I’m just as good as Brom.
“Don’t listen to him, Ben,” Katrina said.
She’d somehow pushed herself to her feet, and come to stand beside me. Her voice was weak and fluttery, and after a moment she leaned on my arm. But her eyes were just as fierce as they’d always been. She seemed more awake, more present, than she’d been in months.
“Don’t listen to him,” Katrina repeated. “It isn’t true, and that isn’t Henrik Janssen.”
I swallowed hard. “I know. It’s something from the woods.”
“No.” Katrina shook her head. “Not something from the woods. It came from somewhere but it didn’t start in our woods, even if it did infect them, infect everything it touched. I don’t know what it really is, but you shouldn’t mistake it for human, though it pretended to be, for a while.”
Henrik Janssen narrowed his eyes, and I saw that they were an unnatural red, almost sparking. “You always knew what I really was, Katrina Van Tassel, even if you never told Brom.”
“Yes,” Katrina said. “I always knew. You’ve done enough mischief today, Schuler. More than enough.”
“Schuler?” I said, looking from Katrina to Henrik Janssen.
He laughed, a laugh that shredded nerve ends. “She’s like Brom in at least one way. Too thick to see what’s right in front of her eyes.”
There was a sudden tang of rotting meat, of blood, and the sulfurous curl of a freshly struck match, and then I saw it. Saw what Schuler de Jaager had hidden all those years.
Henrik Janssen—or the thing inside his body—leaned close to me, and it took everything I had not to flinch away. I stared into those unnatural eyes and realized that whatever I thought I knew about Crane, about Brom, about Schuler, about the miasma in the woods, about anything at all, wasn’t true. I didn’t know what this creature was or what it wanted but it was evil, so entirely and completely evil that I felt my throat closing up, that it was choking me.
“I’ll see you again soon, my delicious girl,” he said.
Henrik Janssen’s eyes rolled back in his head and he folded to the ground, unconscious. I didn’t have time to worry about him as Katrina suddenly slumped against me, and a moment later she too was on the ground, all her strength drained away.
“Oma!” I knelt beside her, lifting her head into my lap. “Oma, you need to rest. You need water and food. I have to get you to a doctor.”
She waved one hand weakly at me, her eyes shut. “No doctor.”
“But—”
“No doctor. Doctor can’t help. Don’t want him to.”
“Oma, you have to—”
“Schuler started the fire. I saw him, as Henrik, through the window, going around to the back of the house. I knew what he’d done the moment I smelled the smoke. I could have walked out the front door. But I didn’t want to.”
Her voice seemed to be fading away with each word, disappearing forever, and that scared me more than anything that had happened that day.
“I want to be with Brom,” she said. “I want that so much.”
“Oma,” I said, and my tears fell onto her face.
“Don’t cry, Ben,” she said. “This is what I want. I’m sorry to leave you alone, but there’s something you have to do. You’re the only one left who knows. You’re the only one left who can try.”
She nodded, her eyes still closed. “You have to go into the woods. You have to find him, and root him out, or else Sleepy Hollow will be haunted by him—it—forever. Promise me.
Promise me you’ll do this.”
I didn’t want to promise. I didn’t want to take on something so huge and terrible. I didn’t want to do it alone.
Her hand gripped mine, and there was surprising strength there. “Promise.”
I bowed my head. My voice was nothing but a whisper as I said, “I promise.”
“You’re not less than Brom,” she said, her voice so low I had to bend close to hear her. “You’re more than him, and me, and Bendix, and Fenna. You’re all of us. Remember that. Remember we loved you.”
I don’t want to remember. I want you here, with me. I don’t want to be alone, the last of the Van Tassels and the Van Brunts.
But it didn’t matter what I wanted, didn’t matter that I cried. The last breath sighed out of her, and she was gone, and I was all that was left of my family.
I sat there, weeping, with Katrina’s cold hand in mine, and watched the house burn to the ground.