My father is leading the way, as though this was his idea. He walks with a determined stride, his shoulders squared, his head high, but I can see the knowledge that he is the last remaining target of the Horseman weighing on him.
I swallow against the lump in my throat.
The museum’s iron gates groan as we push through them. The building is old, dating back to way before the Horsemanfirst appeared in this town. I can’t believe that just a few short days before, Ichabod and I had been here under such different circumstances. How much had changed in such a small space of time.
The receptionist glances up as we file in.
“Sorry, loves, we’re closed for the day. Maintenance work.” She jerks a thumb over her right shoulder.
“We’re not here for the exhibits, Martha,” my father says, striding past her desk without waiting for permission. “We just need to access the archives.”
Martha half rises from her chair. “Um, Mr Van Tassel? Excuse me, but you can’t just…” she calls after him, but he’s disappeared around the corner to the left.
“Sorry,” Meredith offers. “Town business, you know. Urgent.” She smiles tightly.
Martha hesitates, then shrugs and sits back down. “Fine. But if anyone asks, I didn’t let you in.”
The three of us hurry around the side of the desk and towards the back rooms. Ichabod holds up a thick red velvet rope and we pass underneath. The deeper into the building we go, the colder it gets.
We catch up with my father in the archive room. It’s a vast space lined with bookshelves, stuffed full of yellowing documents and leather-bound ledgers. There’s a fragile-looking town map in a glass display case in the centre of the room.
I step forward, taking a deep breath.
“Okay, we’re looking for something from the late 1700s to early 1800s, right?” I look to my father to confirm, and he nods. “Anything at all that might mention the Horseman.”
“Let’s get started then.” Ichabod’s glee at being surrounded by so much history and research is evident.
We split up, each taking different sections of the archive. I start with handwritten logs from the 1700s, scanning for anymentions of the Horseman. My fingers tremble slightly as I turn the old pages, the faded ink making them hard to read. They seem to be mostly stock and inventory records from the old farmlands. I move on.
Across the room, Ichabod is working silently, his brow furrowing as he sorts through a stack of old letters. My father is working his way methodically across the shelves nearest to me, and Meredith is sat on the floor, surrounded by loose sheets of paper.
The next set of files I pick up appear to be church records from the 1800s — attendance, births, deaths. I flick through quickly. My heart rate spikes as I find mentions of strange happenings, reports of demonic sightings, burials of villagers found with their heads cut off. Prayers are scribbled in the margins.
I think I might be on to something.
The church was aware of an evil presence, one that was poisoning the town. I turn the page.
Blank.
And the next.
I fumble through the files, but the next entry I find reads like the ones at the front of the records. There’s a birth announcement, a wedding announcement, but no further mention of the Horseman.
I grit my teeth, replace the ledger, and keep looking.
I’m acutely aware of time passing. I check my phone. An hour passes. Then two.
I feel every second pressing down on me.
We find nothing.
“There’s nothing here,” I mutter, snapping the book in my hand closed and shoving it back into the stack.
My father exhales sharply and rubs a hand down his face. I avoid eye contact with him.
“I really thought we might find something that would help,” Meredith says, and her voice breaks into a sob. He crosses the room to put an arm around her shoulders.
I sigh and sit back on my heels. I had thought so too, and now we’re running out of time.
