Brom Bones shook his own head, still smiling.
“That’s just the thing. He’slookingfor his head. His was carried off by a cannonball. He rides every night when the leaves begin to drop, searching for it. And he doesn’t go off to Tarrytown,“ he added, looking askance at the reveler who had added that detail. “He stays right here. Here in the Hollow. Regimented the Hessians were. If they were improperly uniformed, they would be punished. Beaten. Given manual labor. If he’s missing his head, he’s missing his hat. Improperly uniformed.”
Katrina sucked in a low, slow breath as others jumped in to embellish the tale. There was a difference between an old woman still coming to church every day and a restless spirit with unfinished business. The former was easy to ignore, and most people did. The latter, however, was malevolent, and could cause all manner of harm. She had thought that this was another of Brom’s tricks, but it seemed everyone at the feast had something to say about this mounted rider.
“He rides a demon horse sent from the devil himself.”
“He’ll chop the head off those he catches, to see if it fits.”
“Ansel Van Torn said he bursts into flames once he reaches the churchyard.”
“I heard you have to cross the Major’s old bridge. A spook like that can’t cross running water.”
“It’s not his body that bursts into flames, it’s the head he wears. A fireball so he can see the way.”
On and on they went, Brom interjecting when he found them in error. She’d come to the realization over the years that people loved the ghosts they could not see, benign and invisible, a blank slate for the living. The ones with a more tangible presence, however, always invoked fear, and rightfully so, she thought. The stories of this Headless Horseman were regaled with as much horror as they were glee, and she supposed there might, in fact, be the shape of some truth in all their fantastic tales. She had never seen the fearsome spirit, although, she realized, the families she’d rotated through during the spring and summer were the easternmost farms.
She was now a guest of the Jansen household, a shoemaker who was the kindest man in the village, by her estimation. He was the one who had purchased Gunpowder for her from old Van Ripper, for the cost of two quarters and three sets of new shoes, one for each of the Van Ripper children. He had a bright sparkle in his blue eyes, and she had decided his kindness made him handsome. Moreover, he kept his hands to himself.
“It’s a shame you didn’t come ’round with your school last year, when I was looking for a new wife.”
It was neither threat nor proposition, and she’d heard the genuine wistfulness in his voice. Katrina knew she was of an age with his late wife, who had succumbed to a cough two winters prior. The young woman still drifted through the house, reaching out her arms to the children who couldn’t see her, standing over the bed she had shared with the husband she had loved, now occupied by the young stranger he had married the previous year, a girl with hair the color of straw.
Katrina had woken one night in a startle, sitting up in her own bed, startling at the shade looking down on her. The woman had the same long, wavy hair the color of horse chestnuts and dark eyes as she herself did, and she understood the shoemaker’s wistfulness.
“I know,” she had whispered, feeling the dead woman’s pain as her face crumpled before she turned, drifting through the wall to where her children slept.
She couldn’t imagine what it was like for Jansen’s dead wife, wandering those rooms, sitting before the hearth that no longer warmed her, watching a stranger raise the children she had borne. She struggled to fall back to sleep that night, renewed in her desire to avoid nuptials — her position in town was too precarious, her freedom too precious, and the notion of having to live with the restless spirit of the woman she might be replacing in her husband’s life, too burdensome to contemplate. Having to see them was hard enough. Life tethered to death.
The shoemaker’s home was not far from the center of town. Just a few hectares surrounding the homestead, with goats and chickens, only two cows, some sheep in the back pasture. She liked the proximity to the church, cutting the time of her commute in half . . . But it necessitated crossing the old Major’s bridge, she realized, a journey through a heavily shaded dell, past the haunted tulip tree in the town square, and the hanging tree beyond the bridge, over brook and brake and up a steep hill to the Jansen’s property.Perhaps this is the one ghost who is only a story.
The party broke up not long after. Wagons of children and buggies with married couples, young women sitting pillion behind gallant young men. Brom Bones was quick to encircle her waist as she moved across the dark yard, slipping up behind her and making her shriek in startle.
“You should let me see you home this evening.”
His chest was broad and warm, a heavily muscled expanse, like laying against the lush, sunbaked floor of the valley in its breadth and firmness, the pounding of his heart a hammer against her cheek.
Katrina had no desire to wed Brom Bones, but that didn’t meandesireitself was absent from their acquaintanceship. She had let him have her once before, after he’d gallantly offered to escort her home from a barn dance at the village hall.
“You ride well for someone not from these parts,” he’d quipped the night of the community gathering, from beside her in the carriage he drove. “A pity. I would have offered you lessons on how to best control a beast between your thighs.”
“Lessons on horseback?” she had laughed, playing the part of coquette. “Because that sounds more like riding a brute likeyou.“ She’d learned how wide her thighs needed to stretch around him a short while later when he’d settled atop her in the field before the Van Torn farm, her host family at the time, the thump of hips as solid as Gunpowder’s hooves striking the packed earth when she was able to cajole the old devil into a run.
She’d let Brom Bones have her several times again after that, annoyed with herself for being attracted to his size and brawn, reminding herself afterward that it didn’t matter that he was handsome. He was uncouth and a bit of a braggart, and she didn’t care for his love of trickery. . .But the thickness of his cock and the hard drive of his hips would feel good now; might dislodge the ghost stories crowding her mind like errant cobwebs. A deep fucking to addle her brain was what she needed, and Brom Bones had fucked her deeply before.
Her pride, though, was too great. She could feel his ardour, excited by the daughter of the wealthy farmer who had hosted them, whom she knew he had his eye on marrying. Katrina didn’t know if it was the sight of the flush young woman serving him his meat or the evidence of her father’s wealth around them that had made his cock hard, but she was in no mood to satisfy his desires for other women and material things that night.
“I’ll see myself off, actually. And if I need an escort, Jansen and his wife are right there.”
But Jansen and his new wife were long departed. She realized, once she had set off, that she should have left with them earlier. The leaves had already begun to tumble in a crimson and gold spill from the trees, banked up on the side of the road, and while their splendor was brilliant to behold as the sunlight streamed down, now that it was dark, they added to the shadows that crossed her path. She had none but the moonlight to guide her way, and Katrina realized she had tarried far too long beside the fire.
The entire town had crowded around the bonfires and clam pots, but now the road was deserted, and the sound of Gunpowder’s hooves plodding up the packed earth of the road seemed over loud in the dark night. At length, she focused on the other sounds of the countryside to calm her nerves — the singing of tree frogs and the burble of toads competing with the sawing of crickets in the fields. The hoot of an owl and the rustling of mice scurrying through the leaves, the clip-clop of a regimented horse. Normal sounds of the rolling farmland as she entered the dense tree cover that led into town.
It was only after an audible breath was blown out by the horse that she realized the nimble hooves she heard didnotbelong to the cantankerous old steed she sat atop. They came from behind, closely behind, a shadow that had not been there only moments earlier, and surely she would have heard another rider galloping up.
Don’t look back. If you look back, you will see.She didn’t know whose voice it was reverberating in her head, only that she knew she needed to follow its instructions. A breeze rolled over the dell, one whose iciness owed nothing to the mild autumn night, rattling the remaining leaves on their branches and sending a scatter of their crunchy, fallen brethren across the road. The noise disguised the sounds of the two horses for a moment, but through it, she was positive she heard a dark chuckle, indicating the other rider was fast closing the distance.
Give them what they want.That was the way she had dealt with men and ghosts her whole life, and she ought not stop now.Get it over with and finish them quickly. Ghosts and men. But what didthisghost or man want?You of all people, acting like a goose. Listening to ghost stories and frightening yourself silly. It’s probably Brom looking to scare you, and you’re letting him succeed.They were nearly to the old bridge, the covered bridge, and she dared not enter it with this rider so close behind. They were impatient. They kept edging closer.You ought to let them pass.It was what she would do for the living, and so it was what she would do for the dead, if the rider on her heels were of the ghostly persuasion.
