He pressed ever closer, and she fancied she could feel the heat of his cock through the wool of his breeches, turning so that he would not see the roll of her eyes. It was best to get it over with. Katrina Van Tassel was no stranger to ghosts or the lewdness of men, and she knew how to handle both. When he led her hand to the wool-covered bulge, she did not struggle. A quarter a week, room and board, a roof over her head, and the freedom to live her life on her terms. She was doing her part to ensure little girls of future generations might not need to make such concessions to their dignity.Some day. She squeezed the hardness beneath her palm, stroking the shape of him until the old man was panting, waiting for him to undo his own buttons.
He would ask for more, she knew. They always did. He would want her to use her mouth, to spread her legs, would expect her to allow him to rut her in the barn as often as he liked, until she was thick with child and sent off in disgrace, but she had no intention of doing any of that. It was a love of reading that had afforded her knowledge she might not have learned otherwise, for the Greeks and Romans both were fond of describing their pleasure in exacting detail, and she had perfected her technique. Finish them quickly, before they could push her to her knees.
Hans Van Ripper grunted when she took his stiffened cock in hand, pumping him steadily. It was only a short few moments before he was thrusting upward into the ring of her fingers, groaning when her hand twisted. She buried her knuckle into the soft skin behind his bollocks, pressing into his flesh as she wrung his cock, rolling her eyes again when the old man cried out, spilling himself into the hay like a green boy.
If he had been expecting her to sit upon the pillion sidesaddle, precarious and unsteady, he would have been disappointed. He had barely stuffed his deflated manhood back into his breeches when she stepped into the stirrups, pulling herself astride old Gunpowder’s back. She didn’t bother glancing back as the horse plodded into the yard, nickering peevishly when she kicked him into a trot. A quarter a week and the wind in her hair. She would make do as she always had.
And make do, she did.
To her surprise, Katrina found she quite liked Sleepy Hollow. She was used to being the odd one out, owing to the transient nature of her position and her own peculiarity. Seeing ghosts had marked her somehow, as if it was an invisible stain other folks could see, as if they knew she straddled the line between the worlds of the living and the dead. Sleepy Hollow had no shortage of either, which made the little valley-nestled town and the superstitious busybodies who inhabited it a perfect fit for her, a notion that worried as much as it cheered.
Her time at the Van Ripper farm had passed quickly enough, and she rotated her way around the entire town throughout the spring and summer, getting to know the families of the children, her students and their siblings, relieved to find that the men who would press their advantage to be a surprisingly small number. She helped to pluck chickens and spin wool, milked cows and occasionally their owners alike, rocked babies, and prepared her lessons. Staying with each family in turn meant that each pupil received their fair share of one-on-one time with her eventually, and she was pleased with the progress they were making.
By the time autumn rolled around, she was feeling quite at home. If there was one thing the residents of Sleepy Hollow loved as much as gossip and ghost stories, she learned as the seasons changed, it was an excuse to throw a party. Clambakes and harvest dinners, bonfires and square dances — a celebration nearly every weekend it seemed, every guest in attendance eager to share the local ghost stories over apple cake and crullers and honeyed mead.
“There’s a widow at the hanging tree, and in the spring, you can hear her sniffling at twilight. Take a walk down there next year if you don’t believe me, you’ll hear it for yourself.”
She had never seen the funeral train passing through the center of town, but there were enough in the village who had described it vividly over steaming trenchers of hot chowder during the autumnal clambake. She listened to their tales in wide-eyed wonder, smiling when the lighter yarns were embellished for her benefit, feeling a shiver run up her spine at the deadly serious tone of others.
She had never passed directly through the glen at Raven Rock, but she had been warned that come winter, she would hear the echoing ring of the Woman in White’s wails, their very own banshee, warning of the incoming snow.
“When you hear her screamin’, that’s how you know the real snow is comin’. Careful traveling through the glen, for she’d be glad to have company.”
Katrina nodded, eyes wide, the steam rising from her chowder heating her cheeks. Every time she turned around there would be another neighbor there, waiting to fill her plate and ply her with another tale.
Despite what the villagers thought with their stories, most ghosts were content to leave the living alone, if they saw the living at all, and the ghosts of Sleepy Hollow were no different. Some were stuck in a loop, an endless cycle of the same action and pattern, unable to break free. For those that did see and hear, she had found it was best to treat them the same way she might have done if they were still living. The ghost of a naughty child running down hallways and slamming doors needed a reprimand. Old women needed courtesy, and old men a bright-eyed smile. She had lived with ghosts her entire life, and if she simply treated them as she would treat any other stranger, they were normally content to leave her alone.
There was an old woman in a faded black dress, her presence so thin that the sun’s rays cut through her like cheese, who came to the church every single day. No one else saw her shade sitting in the last pew, only Katrina, and she wondered who it was the old woman’s ghost still mourned for. She nodded to the old widow whenever she happened to see her, the same courtesy she’d give a neighbor.
The churchyard on the hillside of the small chapel was dotted with crooked, bleached stones — former neighbors and early settlers, cooks and clergy and gossips and grandmothers, resting beside soldiers from the Seven Years’ War, and them next to rebels and redcoats alike — each of them waiting for the veil to grow thin, when they could once again give voice to their complaints.
Katrina had been passing the hillside as she left the classroom one day, when a young man sat up from the overgrown grass, the color leached out of him just like the age of his headstone. She was unable to tell if the coat he wore was blue or red, but she watched as he searched the grass for his missing arm. She’d prodded Gunpowder on after a few minutes, feeling rather sad, deciding there was nothing to be done for the doomed soldier.
There were ghosts all around them, but the residents of Sleepy Hollow only paid attention to those on whom they could bestow a name and place and function — the Woman in White of Raven Rock, the Major General of the old covered bridge, the weeping widow of the hanging tree. They did not see their neighbors and loved ones, still clinging to the places they had once known, invisible to all but her.
As her neighbors reveled in their ghost stories, doing their best to leave her unsettled, Katrina held her tongue. She did not share her own ghostly observations of the town. There were far more spooks and spirits than the living residents of the Hollow realized, but she would not be the one to give up their secrets. Life tethered to death.
“If you’re telling ghost stories, you can’t leave out the Horseman.”
The man’s voice was deep and booming, and she sat a bit straighter in her chair as she felt the heat of him near. Brom Bones. He had the whole of the Hollow in his thrall — a master horseman and hunter, strong and athletic, he was a playful jokester with a big mouth, and every young woman she had met in the homes where she had stayed lit a candle each week that he might tether his horse to their hitching post one evening to come courting.
“TheHeadlessHorseman,“ he clarified, and a prickle moved up her neck, a cool breeze suddenly moving across the wide field, making their fire waver.
Unlike the other marriageable young women in the village, Katrina did not share in the unrequited yearning for matrimony to the town heartthrob. Brom had a penchant for pranks, and even if she hadn’t been disinclined to lay down ties where they might be cruelly severed, his particular humor was enough to keep her from wanting to be married to such a man.He thinks to frighten you.This is all a jape to him.
“I suppose he must be a farmer who had a run in with a chicken he was trying to butcher? Or else some drunkard who thought a low hanging branch was the warm embrace of his lover?”
Her words were not met with the laughter she had anticipated from those around her, although Brom’s broad, ruddy face split into a knowing grin.
“He’s a mounted soldier,” Jansen piped up. “One of them Hessians. The ones who fought alongside the Reds.”
“He tethers his horse in the graveyard and patrols all the way to the good Major’s bridge.”
“I heard he gives chase all the way to Tarrytown.”
“Not without a head he doesn’t!”
“A dullahan,” she interrupted. “Like the dullahans of the Irish moors? Does he carry his head on his saddle?” Katrina grinned, happily taking part in the building of one of these fabulous local legends. The residents of the Hollow loved their ghost stories, as much as they loved their tales of the war, and she was eager to fit in.
