Page 39 of The Horseman of Sleepy Hollow
One foot here. Another there. Now a step toward the wall. Slowly, softly—yet hurry, hurry, because I had lost time waiting for the dog to go away, and I had lost time easing the front door open, and I lost yet more time taking off my shoes. The Horseman might be supernaturally quick on his feet. He might have taken the shortcut tunnel and thus saved himself time, while Elatha and I took the long, slow path. He might be at the gate even now, his deadly instinct drawing him to me.
If Eamon did kill me, he would never recover from the horror of it. Of that, I had no doubt.
My brain conjured the image of my beautiful Horseman coming back to himself after the kill, seeing my severed head—would he roar with agony, or weep silently? Neither, if I had my way.
I peered into the parlor. Anika sat in her rocker, with her back to me, watching the fire. The angle of the rocker allowed me a glimpse of the cat on her lap. Her work-creased hand drifted over its snowy fur with such a gentle touch, the way she used to stroke my hair when I was little.
Anika. My aching heart breathed her name. She was like family. And yet she had ordered the Horseman to kill me. Did she feel guilty over it? Was she mourning for me now, sitting there in her rocker, staring into the fireplace?
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than she sighed and murmured, "Oh, Katrina, Katrina. You stupid, stupid girl. God have mercy on your soul."
I did not have to look to my left; I knew exactly where the heavy pewter pitcher sat on the glossy china cabinet beside me. I gripped it, switching it to my right hand, and advanced, raising it, my heart booming like a cannon in my chest, so loud that she must hear it—
Perhaps the cat heard it. He slid smoothly from Anika's lap, bounding away into a shadowy corner. Anika sighed but remained motionless, with her hands upturned and limp in her lap.
I must do this, to save Eamon. I must.
I clutched the pitcher tighter, and swung it in a savage arc toward Anika's temple.
The pewter rang against her skull, a horrible hollow sound that sickened me. She did not scream, but fell forward out of the chair, gasping and scrambling away, pressing a hand to her temple. Her fingers came away bloody.
Then she looked at me. In her eyes shone the dread that Doctor Faustus must have felt when Mephistopheles came for his soul.
"Katrina!" My name escaped her mouth in a sob of fear and anger. "You cannot be here. You will draw him to my house—you cannot—"
"How could you?" Rage traveled my veins, sudden and hot, giving me a fierce, wicked strength. "You were like my mother's sister. Like my second mother."
"It has to be done. And you have to leave." She lurched to her feet, wavering, and turned her back to me. She staggered nearer to the fire; but before she could seize the poker and strike me, I darted forward and locked my arm across her throat, as I had seen Brom do countless times to boys who annoyed him. He always let go before the lack of breath became too perilous, and his victims were left with a bruise and a better respect for him.
But I must not let go. I must show no mercy. I must see it through until the end, until the flight of Anika's soul.
I braced the chokehold with my other hand, tightening my grip, grinding my forearm into her throat as fiercely as I could. The frantic strength that had buoyed me this night was ebbing, weakening—soon I would start shaking and I would collapse, entirely spent.
"I'm sorry," I gasped. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Anika's fingers scrabbled at my arms. Then she raked at my face, but I turned it aside, shutting my eyes tight.
"I have to." The words rushed from me in a sob. "If only you could have left him alone—left us alone—forgive me."
She bucked, throwing us both backward. I crashed against the wall, and agony flared in my back, but I held on. Tighter. Tighter. Power and clenched teeth and raw bone-deep determination.
Then the front steps squalled and creaked.
The door of the house splintered and smashed under rhythmic, heavy blows.
Anika's hands were flailing limply now. She was going lax in my arms. Passed out, but not dead. Not yet.
The stamp of the Horseman's boots drummed through the front room.
Fiercely I crushed Anika's throat, praying to someone, anyone, to snatch her soul away before the Horseman reached me. Before he lifted that golden scythe and sliced through my neck—skin and tendons and bone and jetting blood—my life, spewing and streaming away, my soul whisked off to—
—to Hell, surely.
I could endure Hell, if I knew that Eamon was free. If I had hope that one day he might be there too. Strange thoughts, muddled and nonsensical, born of exhaustion and of terror becausethere he was, my Horseman, a hulking figure in the doorway.
His skull skimmed into the room, two grinning rows of teeth and a couple of blazing eye sockets. "Katrina Van Tassel."
The name curled around my limbs, locking them in place. I could not even say his name, or remind him what I hoped I meant to him, what we were becoming together.
