And so it went.
Her neighbors continued to trade and build on their stories of the Horseman as the autumn season progressed, each more gruesome than the last, and Katrina held her tongue as she drank cider and ate pumpkin bread, listening to the tall tales traded at every gathering.Herexperience with their ghostly neighbor was quite different, not that she’d be airing that in the town square.
By the end of September, she had grown quite accustomed to the horse that would melt from the darkness and the measured approach of her silent escort. He would accompany her as far as the churchyard on those nights when he followed her out of the dell, and it was nearly a shock to realize she was unafraid after so many evenings in his incorporeal presence.
It was several weeks into this new routine when she began to speak to him. Katrina wasn’t sure why. Only that it seemed odd to her to ride with him silently, for if he were any other man in the village escorting her home, she would keep her courtesies and be as pleasant as possible. After all — she would converse with Jansen, flirt with Brom, and it seemed the height of rudeness to leave her headless attendant without the courtesy of conversation.Treat the dead as you treat the living, and they won’t bother you.
“I’m a school mistress. I teach the young girls of the village to read and write. I-I don’t know if that was common in your homeland or not? But it-it’s necessary. Folks don’t like to think so, but it is. It makes girls less reliant on others, more able to speak with their own voices. It gives them the power tohavevoices.”
She paused, glancing swiftly to her silent companion before continuing.
“There’s such little power they have over their own lives as it is. Being able to read, to sign their name . . . it’s more important than most people think. The men in the villages are always resistant at first,” she went on, snorting to herself wryly. “Always.Theydon’t think it’s important. They claim literacy is a form of witchcraft, but of course theywouldfeel that way. They want wives who are subservient and obedient with no minds of their own. But it’s one small thing I can do for these girls.“ After all, the ability to read and write had been her own salvation when her father had died. “I’m proud of the work I do. That’s where I come from every night, giving private instruction to the daughters of one of the east farm families.”
Her cheeks heated, realizing she was rambling. She received no response, not that she was expecting one. It would have been difficult to carry on a conversation without a head, and in her imagination, she liked to think he had been the strong, silent type even when he had been living.
As the evenings went by, she continued to fill the still night air with her chatter, and if her ghoulish companion objected, he gave her no indication. She told him about her family, and the peculiar gift she had always possessed. They had been poor, but her father worked hard, had taught her to read and write himself. She told him about her flight from her childhood village after her father’s death, knowing she’d be forced to marry. She’d spent a short time working as a governess, getting the idea for her school once the family moved abroad, leaving her behind. She told him of her existence moving from town to town, feeling rudderless and adrift most of the time.Perhaps he can’t even hear you. He doesn’t have ears. You’re just talking to yourself.
It didn’t matter if she was, she decided. It was nice having someone to talk to. Nicer still to have someone listening, if he could even hear her, of course. She loved what she did and the freedom it afforded her, but she was an outsider, always. Even here. She’d not been born to this Dutch community, and although she knew it was the benefit of her shared heritage that had made her as welcome as she’d been, she was not one of them. Even though she enjoyed life in the Hollow, even though most of her neighbors were friendly and welcoming, even though she had decided she would quite like to stay, she was an outsider still. Places like this were built on their history — the people who tilled the land and the people who were buried in it, and she shared none of that.
And besides — her occupation did not lend itself to longevity. Her worldly possessions were few, easy to pack in a single valise, moving on to a new village and a new position for as long as it lasted. Inevitably, some minor bedevilment would befall the community — always something easily explained as an act of nature or neighbor, but her school would invariably take part of the blame. Parents would pull their daughters from the classroom, casting them back to the kitchen and illiteracy. Her position would be eliminated and she would be turned out, forced to make her way to the next village or town and start all over again.
“It’s hard,” she admitted, hoping her voice wasn’t as anguished as she sometimes felt, wondering if it even mattered. He said nothing in return. “I carry them with me, these girls. And I wonder what will happen to them, after I’ve left. But-but I very much like it here. It’s strange, I feel as though . . . as though I’mmeantto be here. That I was put here for a reason, but I don’t know why. Maybe I’m not meant to find out. But I’m doing my best to become friendly with everyone, because Iwouldlike to stay.”
She did not see the streak of the fox when it left the woods, moving in a blur across their path. She only saw a hint of red as its tail swished, disappearing into the trees on the other side of the dirt road, feeling the whole world tilt as Gunpowder reared up in fear. She slid, about to fall sideways off the saddle, perfectly poised to be trampled under hoof when the horse came down.
The scream barely had a chance to form in her throat when a strong hand latched around her arm, just above her elbow. She did not see him come up beside her, pulling his horse in tight, leaning sideways off his saddle to grip her. He was strong, impossibly strong, and he held her in place as she squeezed her legs around the old horse, a moment stolen back from the Fates and the fox. She kept her seat.
The Horseman did not loosen his grip until Gunpowder had all four hooves back on the ground, the horse stumbling slightly before he regained his footing and his pace. She twisted in her seat to gape up at her headless companion when she felt his grip slacken, his long, gloved fingers moving through her arm like the wind, incorporeal once more.
Katrina reeled. In all these weeks, even though he rode beside her, even though he presented the opaque figure of a robustly well-built man, he wavered at the edges, a shade still. People screamed when he gave chase, and she understood, for she, too, had screamed. It was a terrifying experience and his rage was palpable when he rode down the unlucky person who had earned his pursuit, but he vanished like a shadow at some point on the road, and even if he didn’t, Katrina was certain there would be nothing he would be able to do at this point. He had no true form, for he no longer belonged to this world. He might have come seeking, but he would vanish with the sunrise and return to the realm of the dead.
Now, though, something was different. The veil was growing thinner, she realized. The veil between their worlds, which explained why the stories folks liked to trade in town had begun to take on an edge of genuine horror. He rode seeking his head. He rode seeking vengeance. He rode with purpose and malice, intent to do harm.He rode seeking his head.He sought his head to rejoin the living, that was the story told by the older folks. If he found the head that belonged to him, he would live once more. She’d heard more than one whispered tale of decapitated bodies, disappeared neighbors, victims of the Horseman, although whether or not they were true, she did not know.
All shedidknow at that moment was that he was growing stronger and more solid with each night that passed. Come All Hallows’ Eve, he would be as solid as her.
“Thank you,” she gasped out, shivering as his hand pulled back through her, like a waver through her very soul. “Gracious, if you’d not been here, I would have . . . well, I don’t like to think what might have happened. I-I appreciate your escort,” she choked out, realizing she’d likely be as dead as he was if he’d not intervened.At least you’d not be lonely.The thought came to her unbidden, and she shivered again, shaking the morbid, yet oddly comforting notion aside.
“There’s no shortage of dangers a lone woman might encounter in the dark, clearly.”
His arm lingered for a moment, hanging in the air between them, and a curious thrill passed through her at the notion of being able tofeelthose huge, kidskin-encased hands. They would be soft against her skin, a supple drag down her throat and through the valley between her breasts. A smooth glide over each creamy mound, and then a brief stab of pain, the strength and solidness of the fingers the soft leather hid pinching her nipples to rosy hardness.
When she woke in her bed later that night, Katrina was panting hard. It was her own hand cupping her breast, the other thrust between her thighs, the events that had transpired that evening still swirling her mind. They’d continued on their journey once Gunpowder had recovered and he had left her church gate as he always did . . . but he had hesitated once more. He had hesitated, and so had she, unconsciously leaning toward him as he paused, gripping her reins and blushing hotly when she realized what she was doing.
The veil grew thinner and soon he would be riding people down as more than just a wisp of smoke, a true threat, they claimed. He grew more solid, more able totouchher, to grip her, to hold her down, pinned beneath his considerable size.
Closing her eyes again, she tried to imagine what those gloved fingers would feel like skating down her body, over her stomach and atop her thighs, pressing into the heat they discovered. Her slickness would coat the leather, giving him a slippery purchase against her, two of his thick fingers unfurling as they had done on the road, before curling into her.
It was only her own hand, her own fingers pressed into the slick heat of her cunt, her own wrist that thrusted them, but in her mind, it was his. In her always-vivid imagination, it was the Horseman who would fuck her with his hand, those huge gloved hands, before pinning her down and unleashing his cock, swollen and solid as the veil grew thinner. He would be able to have her, to fuck her as deeply as Brom Bones had done on more than one occasion by then, and she would open her legs for him gladly. She bit her lip so hard that she tasted the copper tang of blood, choking down her moan as she came to the thought of being filled and fucked by his temporary form.
Surely there was a reasonable explanation, she told herself afterward, feeling her heart thumping at the back of her tongue. She was under stress, the extra work, the always-present panic that she might be sacked, her commute and the ghostly apparition that had made itself her companion . . . Her stress and nightmares had coalesced into a waking reality, that was all. Katrina felt eyes staring down at her, and she refused to turn, knowing she would see Jansen’s dead wife casting her judgment.
“It was a nightmare. That’sall,“ she announced peevishly, rolling to her side and forcing her eyes shut.
“You know, it’s a bit of an insult that you’ve not stayed with me yet. Rotating your way around the whole town, skipping my door as if there was a pox on my house. And after all I’ve done to help you feel welcome since your arrival. I think you owe me an apology.”
Katrina turned her face up with a smile, his deep voice a rumbling vibration at her back. It was true. She’d not stayed at the Van Brunt residence since her arrival in Sleepy Hollow, even though she’d made the circuit around the majority of her students’ homes.
“I don’t recall you being a student at the girls’ school,” she chided, still smiling as Brom Bones gripped her forearms from behind with his huge hands, pulling her against him. The broad plane of his body was warm at her back, one of his long, muscled arms dropping to encircle her waist, pinning her there. It was a compromising position, scandalous if anyone were to see them, but for the moment, they were alone. “Nor are there any students in your care requiring one-on-one instruction, to my knowledge.”
