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PROLOGUE
THE LAST NIGHT IN SLEEPY HOLLOW
There are nights in Sleepy Hollow when the air itself seems to listen. The old Dutch houses lean inward as if sharing a secret, and the great elms along the road hold their branches still, unwilling to disturb whatever walks beneath them. On such a night, Ichabod Crane rode home from the Van Tassel feast with a heart full of hope and a head full of stories he wished he had never heard.
The moon was thin. The mist was thick. The road wound like a pale ribbon through the woods, and every rustle in the underbrush felt like a whisper meant only for him. Ichabod was a man easily moved by tales of spirits, yet he had never known the woods to feel so watchful. Even the crickets had fallen silent, as if they too waited for something to pass.
When the first hoofbeats sounded behind him, he told himself it was only Gunpowder’s echo. When the second set came, heavier and slower, he dared not look. And when the third came, close enough to shake the ground, he finally turned.
The rider was there. Tall. Broad. Cloaked in shadow. And where a head should have been, there was only darkness.
What followed became the talk of the Hollow for generations. Some said Ichabod fled across the bridge with a scream that split the night. Others claimed he faced the phantom with a courage no one had ever suspected. A few whispered that the Horseman carried him off in a blaze of fire. And Brom Bones, who laughed the loudest, never quite met anyone’s eyes when the tale was told.
At dawn, the villagers found Gunpowder grazing by the churchyard. They found Ichabod’s hat near the bridge. They found a shattered pumpkin lying in the dust. They found nothing else.
No footprints. No torn cloth. No sign of struggle. Only the quiet certainty that something had passed through the Hollow that night and taken more than a schoolmaster with it.
In the weeks that followed, the town returned to its rhythms. The children found a new teacher. Katrina Van Tassel married as her father wished. Brom rode with a swagger that grew with every retelling of the tale. Yet there were moments, late in the evening, when the wind shifted through the trees and the villagers felt a presence just beyond the edge of sight, as if Ichabod Crane still lingered somewhere between the world they knew and a world they could not name.
Some believed he fled in shame. Some believed he met a darker fate. And some, the oldest and most superstitious, claimed that the night does not always give back what it takes.
As for Ichabod Crane, his story did not end at the bridge. It merely slipped from the grasp of Sleepy Hollow and into a place where the roads do not follow the rules of men. A place where the dead are not always finished. A place built from shadows and secrets, waiting for a man who had already crossed one threshold and was destined to cross another.
But the Hollow never learned that part. It only kept the silence, and the silence kept the mystery.
And somewhere beyond the reach of dawn, Ichabod Crane opened his eyes.
Keep in touch: Coming soon: A Series of: Ten Novelette Stories Wrapped in a blanket of Eerie fibremist: Don't be scared, be Frightened to the marrow of your spirit.....
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