Page 10 of The Horseman of Sleepy Hollow
"Come, Katrina. We cannot be caught here." He grabbed my hand. "We must run."
"I cannot run," I gasped. The edges of my vision darkened. The wetness on the back of my dress was spreading. "Brom, I am hurt."
He darted a panicked look down the road, where a shadow on horseback took shape in the gloom—a burly silhouette of inky black against the spiderweb of dark forest. There was something wrong about the silhouette, something missing. Broad shoulders, and between them a space—an emptiness. I squinted, sure that the oncoming rider must be slouching, hunched forward.
"The Headless Horseman," Brom breathed.
"No, that's a fireside tale," I whispered.
"If you cannot run, then hide!" Brom lurched away from me and pelted along the road in the direction of my house.
I clung to the low stony wall of the bridge, bowed over with pain and terror. "Brom, please. Do not leave me!" My call was barely audible over the rumble of hooves. I hated myself for trying to summon him back; but the devil I knew must be less dangerous than the headless one riding out of the night.
My legs would not hold me anymore. I sank against the side of the bridge, the stones scraping my back. I tried to reach around, tried to press the wound with my fingers to stop the seeping blood, but my strength was ebbing fast. I half lay by the wall, staring down at the moss-crusted flagstones of the bridge, staring at my fingers splayed across them—fingers splattered with Ichabod's blood and smeared with my own.
The pounding of the hooves slowed to a heartbeat's pace. When the first hoof struck the bridge, its iron shoe rang through the stones and reverberated into my very bones.
Another ringing step, and another.
My breaths came shallow and frenzied, mere sips of air, not enough to sustain life for long. But I could not face my death cowering against the stones. I must see the form of the man who was coming for my head.
Swallowing my terror, I turned, angling my face upward.
Knobby columns of black rose beside me—the horse's legs—and a giant body gleamed ebony and silver in the starlight. The horse snorted and shook its great head, its mane shimmering fluidly.
My gaze traveled to a massive leather boot, up a long muscled leg in tight dark trousers, to a heavy greatcoat topped with a wide collar, and—
No head.
I was expecting the head to be absent, but the sight of such strangeness, such wrongness, sent a jolt through my body.
The Horseman sat unmoving on his mount. Could he even see me as I cowered in the shadow of the wall? After all, he had no eyes.
An orange bolt streaked through the night—not a lantern or a star, but a ball of fire, with dark holes streaming flame and smoke. A skull—hisskull. It hovered above the collar of his coat in wicked imitation of the head he had lost long ago.
And the skull, grinning and flickering with flame, angled its smoke-seared eye sockets toward me.
He saw me then. No hope of staying hidden until he passed.
My only chance—to beg his mercy.
"Hessian." My voice scraped raw through my throat. "I am no soldier as you once were, but I have seen an innocent man die tonight, and I am wounded. I beg you to spare me so I may seek justice for the schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane. If you look under the bridge, you can see his body. Please—help me—"
The Horseman's other hand, the one hidden behind the neck of his steed, rose slowly into my view. He gripped a viciously curved scythe that seemed to gleam with its own golden light. Was it made entirely of gold? I could have sworn so—or perhaps I was finally yielding to the loss of blood, sinking into shadow.
I crumpled forward, prone on the flagstones, utterly spent. My eyelids fell shut, agony and a sinking heaviness taking me down into the dark.
The last thing I heard was a faint thud, and the scrape of boots on stone.
2
My consciousness resurfaced as I was dumped ungraciously onto a cloth-covered surface—a bed, maybe? I lay on my stomach, my face half-buried in something soft. Blinking, I tried to lift my head. But I caught only a hazy glimpse of a lantern, a table, and a chair before someone swore foully and wrapped a strip of cloth across my eyes. I squealed and tried to wrench away, but skilled fingers had the knot of the blindfold fastened before I could dislodge it.
"Be still," growled the voice—a male voice, rough as the stone of the bridge, and deep as a well. "Or I will cut off your head after all. Or perhaps you will bleed out, and save me the trouble."
There was a twist in the voice at the end of that sentence—humor, maybe? Dark humor, if so. His threat fixed me in place, still as a log—until the hands that had fixed my blindfold seized the back of my dress, and a cold blade grazed the nape of my neck. I screamed, but the hands took no notice. With a sharp rip of fabric, the man split my dress down the back and laid it open. Then he slit my shift and pushed that aside as well.
Warm air ghosted across my exposed skin, from the nape of my neck all the way to the base of my spine.
