His eyes met mine, and he gave me what seemed to be an apologetic smile before carefully lifting his head from its precarious spot above his shoulders and settling it once more onto his lap. The gesture of a man so calmly removing his own head from his body might have sent me into a fit of hysterics if I had not been anticipating it, and I was suddenly very glad he had approached me the first few times in his true form, which now at least seemed more natural, if not still slightly unsettling. What fragile creatures humans were, I realized in that moment.
“Would… Would you be gracious enough to tell me everything again, that I may better understand?” I asked, licking my lips nervously.
“Yes. I would tell you my story that connects it as well, if you would hear it,” he offered. There was something in his voice that I thought might be hope. I wondered when his last opportunity to share his own story with anyone had been, so I settled back against the bench.
“Yes, please. I would like to hear it all.”
And so the Horseman told me his story.
“I do not remember my parents or how I came to be on my own in this world, but I know I arrived in Sleepy Hollow as a young man, no older than you are now. I do not remember the year, only that it was long ago, before the town even existed as more than a few log cabins. I built my own house here, and the town began to emerge around me, growing with new people every day. This church we are sitting in was one of the structures I helped build. Families began to come, raise children, clear the area for farming. It was a charming place, the sort of place you might find in a fairy tale, with bright grass, perfect soil for planting, the river not far away. The sort of place where one might live happily for all of his days.
“And then the Van Tassels came. I do not remember how long I had been living in the town upon their arrival, but it had been a number of years. I was still a single man, for my desires lay outside of a woman and family, and I was busy with helping the town to prosper and thrive. There were three Van Tassels when they first came. Baltus Van Tassel, his wife, Elizabeth, and Baltus’s daughter Katrina, who was well on her way to womanhood. They were kind and devoted to Sleepy Hollow. They built a grand estate, the very one you visited for the harvest party. They were very wealthy, though by what means, I could not say.
“They lived with us in peace in Sleepy Hollow for what must have been a year or so. And then Elizabeth became very sick and died within a fortnight. After her pious stepmother died, a change came over Katrina. She had seemed a sweet, demure lass, but after her stepmother was gone, she changed into something dark. Something evil. I do not know how long she had been practicing the dark arts of witchcraft.
“Things began to change in Sleepy Hollow, though it was subtle to begin with. The harvest that year was bountiful, the townspeople were rarely sick. The first sign that something nefarious was going on was the sudden arrival of a young, brutish man that had not ever been seen in these parts. He arrived in the night, the same night Elizabeth Van Tassel left this earth, and not a single person had seen him enter the town. He came from the direction of the Van Tassel estate with no idea of who he was or where he had come from. He was taken in by Master Van Brunt and his wife, both of whom were older and barren. He was given the name Abraham, though his nickname soon became Brom Bones. And he was very often seen at the side of Katrina, doing her every bidding, following her every missive.
“The year after Brom’s arrival, the Van Tassels held a grand harvest party on Halloween night. The entire town attended, including myself. Every man, woman, and child in Sleepy Hollow was at the Van Tassel estate, drinking and carousing and dancing. As the sun sank and darkness fell, many people began to head home, for the forest was quite dark at night. I was intending to make my own exit when Katrina handed me what seemed to be a small goblet of wine. She said it was a new vintage she and her father were making and wondered if I might be willing to give my opinion before it was shared with the townsfolk. She had been a most gracious hostess, so I drank it without a second thought. Only minutes later, I was staggering as though I had drank an entire barrel of cider, and I fell into darkness.
“When I came to, we were outside, somewhere in the woods between the Van Tassel estate and the hollow. It was very dark, the moon overhead illuminating the branches above my head. I realized I had been tied to the ground by stakes driven into the earth, spread out like a five-pointed star, and I could not break the bonds that held me. There were torches in a circle around me, and nearby stood Brom Bones, Baltus Van Tassel, and Katrina.
“Katrina knelt beside me and told me that which I now relate to you. She and her father were witches who had evaded execution years before, though not before Katrina’s birth mother had been hung for witchcraft. Baltus and his daughter had escaped and had been looking for a place to call their own. They had traveled for a long time, across the seas and back, during which Baltus found Elizabeth and married her. The three of them returned to the New World, and Baltus and Katrina decided that this place, Sleepy Hollow, was to be their safe haven. I suspect Katrina had started down the path of darkness sometime in those years, and it had awakened a violent desire inside of her. I do not think that Elizabeth Van Tassel was a witch, or that she knew she lay in the company of them. She had been a child of nature, a lover of life and goodness. I believe with all of my heart that they siphoned her soul from her for use in their magic. Her death gave Katrina and Baltus the power needed to create a minion of darkness, Brom Bones, and to seal their safe haven off from the world.
“Magic has a price that must always be paid. The price for life is death; not even such a powerful witch as Katrina could escape that terrible fact. The night of that first harvest party on Halloween night, I do not know why she chose me, of every person in Sleepy Hollow; I suspect it was simply that I did not have a family who would be seeking me out. She told me that I was to be the first blood sacrifice. Every year on Halloween, she would need to sacrifice someone to maintain her magic over the town. I was to become her scapegoat. The memory of me would be erased from the townspeople. They would not remember my name or that I had ever been their friend and neighbor. I was to become a specter, a spirit that would haunt these woods with my presence. She would blame me for the death of the annual sacrifice so she would not have to expend power on erasing the town’s memory of their loved ones. She vowed that I would haunt these woods as a spirit as long as she was alive. And, with that, she then took an ax and struck my neck with supernatural force.
“When I returned to the land of the living, I was no longer of flesh and blood, but in this form you see now. My physical body was consumed by flame. She took my head, though I know not what she ever did with it. And then, I was abandoned here, in the woods. I stumbled upon this church in my despair, my memory of myself already fading, but I remembered how I had helped build it, though who had been with me was already forgotten. This hallowed space was built and consecrated before the Van Tassels moved to the area, and it became my safe haven. Neither the Van Tassels, nor Brom Bones, nor any of the villagers can cross the bridge into the churchyard without my permission. They know this is where I make my home, but they cannot reach me here. I could not, and still do not, remember much of my life before becoming a spirit. Those things I do remember, I have recounted to you in this tale. But I cannot leave Sleepy Hollow, in the same way you could not, nor can anyone else who enters the borders of these cursed lands. That which enters the hollow can never leave.”
The Horseman fell silent after this recounting. I sat on the hard bench, utterly absorbed by his narrative, though my heart ached for his loss. “How long have you been here, alone?” I asked when it seemed that he had finished speaking and was waiting for my response.
“I do not know. Many, many years. Many, many sacrifices. Around a century, if I had to guess.”
“How does the curse work?” I asked softly, morbid curiosity getting the better of me.
“At the harvest party, Katrina will place a hand on the chest of their intended victim and impregnates the spell into their heart,” the Horseman said. “You probably felt it when she did.”
I recalled the sharp pain under my ribs when Katrina had touched me during her flirtations to get me to stay with her and Brom. “Yes, I did,” I said.
“Once they leave the party, Katrina and Brom pursue them through the forest. When they catch them, they decapitate them, as she nearly did to you in the field. Their soul is used to power her dark magic for another year.”
“When I was hiding from the villagers, I heard them say that the Horseman usually only takes their heads, not their whole body,” I said. “What actually happens?”
“She takes the head with her. I do not know what she does with them or if she even has them still in her possession. She leaves the body in the forest for the villagers to find.”
A shudder ran through me, imaging Katrina scooping up my head from the ground after loosing it from my shoulders. “What do the villagers do with the bodies?”
“They burn them,” the Horseman said solemnly. “They believe I have taken them and bestowed my own curse upon them, and fire is the only way to destroy that.”
“But you have never killed any of them?” I asked.
The Horseman paused, and I jolted a bit. “You have?”
He sighed heavily, body folding over as if he were in pain. “Once, I did. One of the ones in the beginning. When I knew the curse would eventually kill. She was in so much pain. She did not have the courage to do it herself, so she pleaded with me to do it.”
I felt a shudder wrack through me. How bad would the pain get? I had already lost myself to blackness multiple times from it.
The Horseman curled up on himself a little more as he said solemnly, “I understand if you cannot forgive me for that.”
“What? For killing her?”
