“I’ll be fine Kat, I promise. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
As I step inside, I glance back but Ichabod is already disappearing into the haze, his silhouette swallowed by the night.
16
There’s no way I’m falling asleep after what I’ve just witnessed. I lie in bed with the covers pulled up to my chin and the overhead light fully illuminating the room. After a few hours without even shutting my eyes, I give up the pretence and look around the room for something to occupy me until sunrise.
I spot the old diary and pull it towards me.
October 31, 1819
Father knows.
I cannot say how he found out. Perhaps someone did see us, perhaps town chatter reached his ears. I only know for certain that Lucy kept our secret. But it matters not. The damage is done.
He summoned me to his office once again this morning, but this time, his face was thunderous with rage. He demanded to know the truth about my soldier, about my pregnancy, and when I could not deny it, his fury was unbound.
He tore from the room, ordering my soldier be found and brought to him. I begged him to reconsider, fell to my knees, wept, pleaded. He would not hear me. Mother tried to reason with him, but he would not have it.
What happened next, I hardly wish to commit to words.
But my soldier is gone. Dragged before my father by his men. Killed for his apparent insult to our family.
My love, my future, torn from me in an instant.
Father says I must be married at once, before my shame is known to the world. He does not care about my grief, my love, my pain, only that I may bring dishonour to his name.
I am broken. I cannot breathe, cannot think. My love is dead, and I am to be wed to a man I do not want. How can I go on?
My eyes burn from lack of sleep and my heart breaks as I finish reading the diary entry. I can feel my ancestor’s pain pulsing off the page, the way her handwriting turns to a scrawl and the paper is blotched from centuries-old tears.
I’d been hoping to read about her adventure of escaping Sleepy Hollow with her love and live vicariously through her journey. To escape my current nightmare using her love story. But of course, the diary wouldn’t have ended up in the attic here if that had been the case.
Not for the first time, I marvel at the peculiar parallels between us. Two Katrinas linked through time, trapped in this house by a loved one’s death. I wonder how both of our stories will turn out?
17
Breakfast at Van Tassel Manor is tense. The sounds of clinking silverware fill the grand dining room around me, but I can hardly eat a thing. I keep replaying the scene from last night over and over in my mind. The Horseman emerging from the mist, nothing but shadows himself, towering over the mayor, his sword slicing through the air. The unfortunate mayor hitting the ground.
The Horseman is real.
I know that now. I can’t deny it any longer.
Ichabod had been right all along, but I hadn’t wanted to believe it. It still doesn’t make sense. How could ghosts be real? But there’s no refuting what I saw.
Wrapping my head around that is one thing, but what happens now? I can’t tell anyone. Surely no one would believe me. I hadn’t believed Ichabod. But how could anyone in the town be safe while the Headless Horseman is stalking the streets? Why is he back? Why now? And what would make him leave?
The sound of my father drumming his fingers against the heavy table breaks through my thoughts, causing me to look up. His expression is dark.
“I saw him drop you off late last night,” he says, his tone clipped, controlled. “Ichabod Crane.”
I tighten my grip on my empty fork. I don’t have the energy for another fight about Ichabod. “So?”
He exhales sharply. “I had word this morning that there’s been another death in the town.”
I wince, the image of the mayor’s limp form once again at the front of my mind.
“That’s three people dead now, Katrina. Three. And you’re out gallivanting through town with him in the middle of the night?”
