Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution (2 page)

No stars dotted the sky, yet Crane could spy a full moon through one of the few gaps amid the branches. Not that Crane needed further proof, but it was early January and the next full moon wasn’t until mid-month. This meant either he’d traveled forward in time—again—or this was a magical realm.

All things considered, the latter seemed the most likely. He’d received visions in dreams from Katrina, and both he and Lieutenant Mills had received waking visions from various sources, from Katrina to the evil Moloch to his friend the Sin-Eater, Henry Parrish. This was very much like those, and Crane was getting rather impatient with them.

“Whoever is responsible, show yourself!”

Crane considered exploring the region. But no, he’d been taken to this place for a reason. If this was the spot he was brought to, he was supposed to be here. If not, he was hardly about to oblige his host by stumbling about in the dark.

Again, he cried out, “Show yourself!”

Suddenly, he was no longer in the forest, but in the van Brunt mansion, sharing a drink with Abraham van Brunt. They were awaiting the arrival of a messenger who would provide them with their next task to perform on behalf of the Continental Congress.

“I have to say, Ichabod, this brandy is simply awful. Where did you find it?”

Without thinking, Crane responded now as he had then: “Your liquor cabinet, Abraham.”

“What a pity, I was hoping I had better taste than this.”

Crane shook his head, trying to force himself to speak to his best friend once again. They had shared this drink several nights prior to when Katrina van Tassel broke off her engagement with van Brunt and declared her love for Crane. That action sundered their friendship, and led to van Brunt selling his very soul, allying himself with evil to enact revenge on Crane and Katrina both.

But van Brunt and his sitting room disappeared then, replaced by General Washington and an outdoor location. Crane stood now with the general
and several of his aides at the site of a massacre near Albany, New York, surrounded by torn tents, ruined fires, rotting food, broken weaponry, and corpses that had been burned in a manner not possible by any weapon Crane was familiar with.

“I have been expecting something like this since Trenton,” Washington said. “We both won and lost that day.”

Before Crane could even respond, the vista altered yet again. This time it was the Masonic cell where he, Lieutenant Mills, and Captain Irving had trapped Death, the Horseman of the Apocalypse, who was embodied by van Brunt after he felt himself betrayed. Mills’s deceased comrade, Lieutenant Brooks, was speaking for the Horseman, taunting him.

“I took
you
! I took you on the battlefield! I slayed your Mason brethren, I hung their heads like lanterns! I killed her partner, and I
will
kill
you
.”

Another change in scene, this time standing over the golem that Katrina had given to Jeremy. The doll had been imbued with tremendous destructive power in order to fulfill its mission to protect their son. Crane had been forced to kill the creature with a blade stained with his own blood.

Again Crane spoke the words he spoke to the golem as it died on the sands of the strange carnival, while holding its misshapen hand: “You have endured enough pain. Bear it no more.”

Then another change, to a bitter cold winter day
at Fort Carillon, which had just been taken by the Continental Army. Crane stood with Caleb Whitcombe and Henry Knox, tasked with moving several of the fort’s cannons to Boston.

Whitcombe was saying, “Are you sure this is wise, Knox? This place was hardly a model of efficiency before old Captain Delaplace surrendered. Shall we make it less fortified by taking their cannon?”

“We’ve been over this,” Knox replied now as he had in 1775. “Boston is of far more import than Two Lakes.”

Crane smiled at the use of the English translation of the region, which the Iroquois called Ticonderoga—and then the scene changed yet again, to a meeting of the Sons of Liberty in New York, led by Marinus Willett. Crane sat in the gallery, surrounded both by members of the Sons and those like himself who were sympathetic. Next to him sat van Brunt.

Willett was speaking: “The regulars are tearing down the liberty poles almost as fast as we may put them up. Perhaps it is time to attempt a different tactic.”

Another man, whose name Crane never did learn, said, “No! Our poles of liberty will be like the heads of the hydra! If they tear down one, we put up two to take its place!”

Willett smiled. “Very well.”

Then he was back in the forest, alone. A half-moon
now illuminated the night sky through the gnarled trees.

Crane’s pulse raced when he saw that Katrina now stood before him. The red hair and magnificently steely features of his wife was the most glorious sight he could imagine. For months, he had suffered through life in a bizarre new century, conscripted to fight a war he barely even understood, while the one thing that grounded him, that kept him from completely succumbing to utter madness, was the knowledge that Katrina was trapped in purgatory and there was a possibility that she might be freed and they would, at last, be reunited.

He’d seen visions of her before, caught glimpses, been given messages, and every time it happened, his heart broke a little bit more.

Like so much of what he’d seen since coming to this place, Katrina was ever-changing. At first she was dressed in the elegant gown she wore the night she ended her engagement to van Brunt, but then that changed to the simple Mennonite dress and bonnet she wore when first they met, and then the nurse’s raiment she was clothed in on the battlefield, including the day of his fateful encounter with the Horseman.

She stood a yard away from him.

“Katrina!” He moved toward her, but always she remained a yard away.

Urgently, she cried out, “You must retrieve the medal you were awarded!”

And then she once again disappeared, leaving Crane alone in the forest, forcing him to lose her all over again.

“Katrina!” he cried more loudly this time.

He started running toward where she had been, but suddenly he found himself surrounded by more trees that cut off every avenue of escape.

No longer did he see an image of a person from his past, nor could he even see the trees, though the half-moon still illuminated the sky. Then, suddenly, there were eight half-moons.

“Katrina!”

“Dude, who the hell’s Katrina?”

Whirling around, Crane found himself blinded by the sunlight. Shading his eyes with his hands, he blinked the odd-colored shapes out of his eyes and eventually focused on the woman with the dog from earlier, who was gazing upon him with obvious concern. She was still walking Puddles, who was now making high-pitched barking noises at Crane’s feet.

Crane shook his head. “My apologies, miss, I did not mean to—” He took a breath.

The look of concern modulated into a smile. “It’s okay. I’ve been there, too. You stand here, sun shining on your face, the sound of the brook flowing, and you just go all daydreamy, am I right?”

“So it would seem,” Crane said lamely. While he was sure this young woman had ample charms in her own right, he needed to speak to Lieutenant Mills immediately.

She put a hand out. “Well, my name isn’t Katrina, it’s Lianne, and I came back here because I realized I didn’t introduce myself. My mom taught me better than that, especially when the other person in the conversation is as polite as you are. Seriously, you’re the nicest guy I’ve met since I moved here for college.”

Crane immediately took Lianne’s hand and bent forward in a proper bow. “The pleasure has been entirely mine, Miss Lianne. My name is Ichabod Crane, and I remain at your service.” He returned her hand to her and stood upright. “I’m afraid, however, that my—my daydream has reminded me of a pressing matter to which I must immediately attend. If you will excuse me.”

Lianne was just holding the hand he’d kissed, in a state of befuddlement that Crane might have found amusing under different circumstances.

Giving her another bow and taking her stunned silence for assent to his request to be excused, Crane turned and headed off the bridge down the stone path that would take him to the Broad Way. Reaching into the pocket of the coat that Lianne had so admired, he pulled out the device that was referred to as a “cell phone.” He assumed the modifier “cell” was a joke referring to how much modern humanity was imprisoned by such devices, as it seemed that the citizens of the twenty-first century relied on them to an appalling degree.

Still, Crane could not help but be impressed by
the accomplishment. By simply entering a prearranged code into this object that appeared to be a simple block of refined metal, Crane could, theoretically, communicate with anyone in the world. It was a capacity that Crane found unimaginable, and he often mused on what the Continental Army could have done with such communicative powers.

Then again, the Regular Army would have had access to same. If nothing else, they might have communicated to Lord George Germain that Jonas Bronck’s River could not accommodate a vessel any larger than a rowboat, which would have saved his lordship a certain amount of embarrassment when he ordered gunboats to sail up that river passage.

Crane managed to navigate the phone’s code system to connect himself to the lieutenant.

Abigail Mills answered after only one sounding off of the phone’s bell. “Talk fast, Crane, I’m in the middle of a call with the ADA about the Ippolito case.”

“Who is this Ippolito gentleman?”

“Before your time—Ippolito’s a guy Corbin and I busted for B-and-E. The case is finally going to trial after a ton of delays, so I’m going over my testimony with Czierniewski.”

Crane only followed about half of what Mills said, but he didn’t bother to inquire further, as he had more pressing matters to discuss. “I need to see you immediately, Lieutenant. There is another crisis brewing, though I’m afraid the nature of said
crisis remains a mystery that you and I must unravel.”

“Which means it’s another day ending in Y for us Witnesses,” Mills said dryly.

Crane frowned. “Every day ends in—” He sighed. “Ah, yes, I see. Very droll.”

“Look, I’ve got at least another ten minutes with Czierniewski. Why don’t I meet you across the street in fifteen?”

“Very well.”

By this time, Crane was walking down the Broad Way and headed for the armory that the local constabulary had converted to an archive. After the previous sheriff, August Corbin, was murdered, his personal files were sent there. Corbin had collected a great deal of information about the supernatural happenings in and around Sleepy Hollow, so Crane and Mills had, with the blessing of Corbin’s replacement, Captain Frank Irving, taken over the armory as their de facto headquarters in the ongoing battle against the mystical forces that were arrayed against them.

Irving had proven a valuable ally, as had Jenny Mills, the lieutenant’s sister, who had aided Corbin in his quest to learn all he could about the battle they were all enmeshed in. Miss Jenny had taken to referring to the armory as “the Batcave,” a reference that Crane had found impenetrable.

The armory itself was one of the few structures that remained from Crane’s time. According to the
histories he’d read over the past few months, the village received an influx of new residents both rich and poor after the invention of the railroad, and another after the invention of the automobile. Both waves of population expansion were accompanied by new construction, much of which replaced the existing farmhouses. By the turn of the twentieth century, the agrarian village that Crane knew was all but gone.

A few exceptions remained, such as the Old Dutch Church, which had already been standing for a century when Crane first visited it, and this very armory, in which several of the strategies enacted in the Battle of Lexington and Concord had been plotted.

It was a short, brisk walk up the Broad Way to Beekman Avenue, the thoroughfare on which both police headquarters and the armory lay.

He entered the latter, nodding to the uniformed officer who sat behind a metal desk reading a copy of the
Journal News
, the newspaper that serviced this vicinity.

“Afternoon, Mr. Crane.”

Crane blinked, not recalling having been introduced to this particular constable. “Good afternoon. I’m afraid you have the advantage of me—” He glanced at the nameplate on the woman’s chest. “—Officer Marble. Have we met?”

She folded the newspaper and put it down on the
desk. “No, but trust me, everyone knows who you are.”

“Do they?” Crane was a bit nonplussed by that.

Marble snorted. “C’mon, Corbin gets killed, Abbie decides
not
to go to D.C., and you and her spend all your time holed up in here. Plus, she ain’t been in the rotation, and Irving’s covering both your asses.” She grinned. “It’s a small town, and we don’t have that much to talk about, least till baseball season starts.”

“Ah, you are a fan of baseball, then? I’m afraid I did not acquire a taste for the sport until Lieutenant Mills took me to a game.”

“Yeah, well, don’t let her fool you into thinking the Mets are a
good
team. You wanna see
real
baseball, go to Yankee Stadium.”

“I will bear that in mind,” Crane said diplomatically, though he followed only part of what Marble said. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“You bet.” She picked the paper back up. “Good luck with whatever you guys are doing back there.”

Crane reached into his coat pocket to retrieve the metal band that contained the ever-growing collection of keys he’d accumulated. It took him a moment to find the configuration that matched that of this particular door, and then he allowed himself ingress.

A few minutes after he settled into one of the chairs of dubious comfort that had been placed in
the room, he heard Mills conversing with Officer Marble. They seemed to be discoursing on the subject of gentlemen by the names of Harvey, Tanaka, Sabathia, and Wright, as well as someone with the appellation “Ayrod.”

Finally, Mills joined him, shaking her head. “I don’t know who’s crazier, Liz Marble for thinkin’ the Yanks aren’t gonna suck again this year or Johnny Ippolito for not pleading out. If he’d just taken the plea that Czierniewski offered him when Corbin and I busted him a year and a half ago, he’d already be back on the streets.” She blew out a breath. “So what’s our latest mystery?”