Chapter 33
Brom
The day the horseman caught up with me I was in Manhattan, standing outside a laborers’ union, looking to see if I could find some work.
I had this awful feeling that I was being watched, which normally wouldn’t have felt unusual.
After all, for those four damn years I had run away from Sleepy Hollow, I thought I was being watched everywhere I went.
But this was different. This was a sense of being watched from inside.
The feeling that there was someone else, not just inside my mind, but inside my body.
I had never known fear like that before.
To know my soul was halved and quartered. Compromised beyond my own hand.
After that everything went black, a blur, until I found myself in Sleepy Hollow again.
But tonight, now, I’m already in Sleepy Hollow.
I just know I’m about to find myself somewhere else.
I can feel that darkness, that blackness, that blur, waiting to take me there.
There’s a knock at my dorm door and with it I sense death. I almost laugh. I know it’s not Crane. I want it to be Crane. I want it to be Crane and Kat, I want to tell them I’m sorry.
But it’s not them.
It’s my destiny.
I get up from my bed and walk over and open it. It’s just a formality anyway. He would have axed open the door and let himself in.
On the other side is the horseman himself.
Eight feet tall, no head, cloaked in black.
I stare at him, at where his head should be, and I resolve to not show any fear.
That isn’t how a hero should die.
“You’re here,” I say to the monster.
You called for me, the Hessian says inside my head. You know what you must do.
I nod, swallowing hard. “I know. Give up my soul.”
The Hessian walks into the room, sucking in all the air and energy, his ax dragging behind him. He spins around to face me, darkness hanging off his cape like growing shadows, waiting to smother me.
“But we have a deal,” I tell him, squaring my shoulders. “And you must keep this deal. It’s the only thing that will redeem your own soul by the end of it.”
The Hessian laughs. You know nothing of my soul.
“No. But I know mine. And ours will be one and the same.”
I stick out my hand, as if shaking hands with an evil spirit is a normal, polite thing to do. I hadn’t ever cared about being polite, about formalities, until this last moment. How fitting.
You have my word, then, the horseman says.
Then the Hessian reaches out and shakes my hand.
And then I feel him from the inside again.
I feel the world go black.