2. Chapter 2
Victor Crane
The crackling blaze of Brom’s fiery mane casts the area in a soft but chaotic glow. I glare up at my unfaithful steed, ready to give him a piece of my mind, when a soft, panicked gasp cuts through my frustrations.
My focus snaps over to the girl and I find her face is entirely pale under the fiery orange light.
Her blue eyes roll back into her head and, before I can shout a warning, her knees buckle and she collapses to the ground, her black skirt pooling high on her thighs and her head resting precariously close to a patch of hardened, gnarled roots that lie twisted and unruly over the ground.
It's a haphazard mess of a pumpkin patch, left to its own plight for years now, and with no one to care for the grounds, it’s gone to rot.
She’s out cold.
“Brilliant job, Brom,” I chastise, my voice echoing grumpily across the misty patch. “You just had to go show off, didn’t you? She’s already kicked me once tonight and now she’s fainted and I just so happen to be a vegetable who can't perform CPR. Can you?”
Brom snorts and a tiny puff of smoke drifts from his nostrils as his fiery mane flickers and dims to a warm simmer, but he looks completely unbothered by my lecture.
“Exactly, of course you can’t. And now we’re adding a rescuing a damsel in distress to our to-do list because of you.”
He snorts hard, sending a cloud of smoke to billow and hover over me.
“Knock it off,” I cough, unable to swat the smoke away as he chortles. The ass.
Instead of helping, the annoying stallion just stands there staring pointedly down at my stubborn main stem still rooted deep into the ground.
I sigh and my orange brow furrows as I look over at the woman, her short boots resting in the dirt nearby.
I groan when Brom whinnies. Unfortunately, he's right and if I want to fix this, I have to do it myself.
Luckily for both of us, tonight is the one time of year where the rules of my curse bend.
I focus every ounce of my energy on the base of my rind.
With a wet, ripping sound, I begin to wrench myself free of the ground.
The scraggly green vines buried beneath me begin to twitch, unearthing small mounds of dirt wherever I pull.
I extend the vines outward like a pair of leafy green arms and dig the thorny tendrils into the hard ground for leverage, hoisting myself up and out.
I brace my leafy limbs against the soil and push, but my main root stretches and resists, anchors me down to the patch.
“A little help, if you please?” I snap, annoyed that I even have to ask. It’s not like we haven’t gone through the exact same routine every Hallow’s Eve for centuries. Except the girl is new.
Brom rolls his big red eyes but steps forward, his head to catch my thick, twisted top stem between his teeth.
He gives it a sharp tug and my main root stem comes free from the earth with a satisfying pop.
I wobble wildly on the ground unattached for the first time in twelve months and sigh in relief.
Now that I'm free, I flex my leaf-covered vine arms and drag my heavy carcass across the ground.
It's an awkward and equally exhausting crawl since I only get to use my vine arms during Samhain each year.
I manage to pull myself across the patch until I finally wobble my pumpkin self to a halt next to the unconscious lady.
Brom comes near to lower his head and nudge at her prone form with his horsey nose while I extend one green vine to gently tap her cheek.
“Okay lady, time to wake up,” I mutter while brushing a stray autumn leaf from her long sleeve shirt. “Come on, don't make me have to drag you across the countryside.”
She doesn't stir at all and somehow stays fast asleep, her breathing slow and even against the misty and damp autumn air.
“Shit.”
Brom blows a soft breath near her face, sending a raven lock of hair blowing in the wind, and I let out a sigh sending my magical flame flickering.
“Well, come on, you big lout. You’re the reason she fainted so you’re going to be the one to carry her.”
The asshole horse tosses his head and bares his teeth at me, reminding me that he has no way of lifting her off the sodden ground, and time is ever wasting away.
“Useless ingrate. You’re lucky glue factories went out of fashion years ago. Get out of the way, then,” I grumble, annoyed in the extreme.
Brom snorts in response, knowing I’d never let his sorry hide near such a place, and steps back as I force my limbs to grow and unfurl. I push and shove what magic I have stored over the last couple of centuries to wrap around the girl.
My vines wrap and curl underneath her, creating a leafy cocoon to hoist her as gently as I can onto Brom’s back.
Once she’s safely enveloped, I grunt with exertion and strain, my leaves shaking with the effort as I lift her carefully and drape her across Brom's wide back.
“Right. Easy now. Don’t drop her,” I murmur, slowly and methodically removing my limbs until she’s free.
Brom shakes his mane but holds steady. The lout.
Although it’s not his fault, he sometimes acts so ill-tempered. He gets more ornery and defiant with each passing year all because of a mistake I made years ago.
It’s now been centuries where we’ve been stuck in our respective lots.
He’s been more stubborn than usual lately, setting fires to the fields, even though at least one person in the world manages to ride him on occasion.
Stallions especially need a firm hand, or they show out with incredible stubbornness, much like dogs when left to themselves.
He’s just a headstrong lad and needs a sure, steady, and consistent hand. If I ever get my head back, we'll be inseparable and he’ll stop his bad behavior for good.
The wind shifts hard, snapping cold against my rind, and I scowl up at the rising moon, knowing I've only hours left. I glance back at the lady’s glasses lying in the dirt and manage to pack them onto Brom’s saddle for safekeeping.
“Come on then boy, let's be on our way.” I roll toward him across the damp grass grimacing to myself when mud smears against my skin.
This is, without doubt, the most humiliating part of the curse.
Each year, on Halloween night, I'm reduced to not only being a helpless vegetable, but one my horse has to fetch from the ground like a stick.
Brom, cursed as he is to be a firebreathing beast of a stallion, suffered because of my mistakes more than two centuries ago.
I sigh as he clops over and I inwardly ready myself for the smell of brimstone as he lowers his head.
His warm breath plumes against the cold air as he bares his teeth and, with the practiced ease of centuries, he clamps his horsey teeth around my thick stem and pulls.
A jolt rushes through me when he lifts me off of the ground and the world tilts wildly before setting to rights as I sway between his teeth.
“There’s a good lad,” I praise while dangling from his mouth.
“Now, let's make some haste. We've more than a country mile to go and we’re already late to the festival as it is,” I remind him.
Brom gives a low, muffled snort and begins to trot, but his gait is a bit too rough.
“Whoa now, gently. We don't need the girl falling off.”
He slows immediately as we jaunt across the land, and I think back to who she could possibly be.
In all my long years, never has anyone found my pumpkin patch, hidden away as it is inside Sleepy Hollow and protected by Frank Stein.
Frank Stein is the richest supernatural I know of, and he owns most of the land in Sleepy Hollow and some outcroppings as well.
I’ve been here for many, many years, but in all that time no one ever fell from the sky onto my rind. How peculiar.
Brom steps off the main path as we press deeper into the shadows of the meadow, and we finally approach the old, gnarled oak tree where my body lies in wait within its coffin.
Excitement unfurls within me at the sight, for nestled right under the old tree trunk and atop its twisting roots is a simple and weathered brick marking my resting place. Somewhere deep beneath the dirt is my coffin, and inside it, my headless body.
Brom stops, lowering his head to deposit me on the ground as my pumpkin self rolls onto a soft patch of moss next to the brick. I turn and adjust my carved eyes back up toward the saddle. “Alright boy,” I whisper. “First we need to get her down gently.”
I focus the energy crackling within my hollow shell and will my vines to come forth again.
Green and vibrant, they rapidly stretch this time and spring into action to do my bidding.
They reach up toward the horse and weave together forming a soft cocoon of giant pumpkin leaves around the unconscious girl.
Brom stands perfectly still as my leafy arms cradle her and move to lower her down to the soft grass and tuck her onto the moss.
She doesn't move, seemingly oblivious to my plant magic holding her.
“Perfect,” I mumble to myself as I retract my vines, leaving her comfortably lying at the base of the old tree. “Now for the real heavy lifting. Step back, Brom, and let's call up the coffin.”
He moves to do just that, but he suddenly stiffens, his attention on the grave.
I glance at the ground where the horse's focus lies and find a spider on the brick gravestone. “Brom, don't you do it,” I say, my voice echoing sharply.
It's too late. The stallion lets out a high-pitched panicked squeal, his black fur standing on end along his back as he throws his hooves into the air. A burst of hot violet fire erupts from his nostrils as he dances backward, snorting wildly, as if the spider were a dragon instead of a tiny bug.
“Calm down, you big baby! You’re a thousand times bigger than it is,” I say, rolling backward to avoid his dancing hooves. I brush the offending insect away with a leafy vine and glance back at the woman.
Fortunately, the girl doesn't wake up and instead mumbles something in her sleep about cinnamon rolls.
“Thank goodness,” I breathe, my tone a hollow sigh. “Stop it now, and ignore the spider, or you’ll not be getting a single sugar cube, and not one candied apple. Do you hear?” I say, resorting to the only threat that can reason with the big, stubborn mule of a stallion.
He shivers, his feet prancing wildly, but he finally shifts his attention to me, his anxiety easing.
“Good boy,” I tell him, because he is, but also to soothe him. “Now come on, we’ve still got to get my body together before we can be on our way.”
I turn to the weathered old brick and wait for the magic to take hold on Brom.
Finally, it surges, and the earth begins to part.
Thick, heavy magical chains the color of fire coils outward from his flanks and dive into the ground around the grave.
They seem to hiss and rattle in the chilly night air, lighting up the area in a brilliant and fiery glow before wrapping tightly around my coffin with a metallic clank.
Brom lunges backward, digging his hooves into the dirt as he pulls and heaves the old magicked pine box from the earth.
Sparks begin to fly from his feet, leaving small trails of smoke and embers in the grass as he strains under the weight.
The ground bulges and roots snap like twigs.
With one final mighty heave of strength from the stallion, the dark soil brings forth my coffin, sending it skidding violently across the dirt while it trails smoke and glowing red embers.
With a loud crack, the fiery chains vanish and a moment later, the pine lid of my coffin pops open with a great magical whoosh.
From inside the box, a large hand reaches out and my body moves to sit up, brushing a year of dirt and debris from its weathered white shirt. It swings its legs over the side of the box and stands up on the grass, rolling its shoulders as it does.
But without a head to tell it what to do, the body starts blindly wandering around like a very confused toddler.
It stumbles over a thick tree root, its arms flailing wildly as it tries to gain its balance and falls to its knees.
“Over here, you idiot,” I hiss from the patch of moss I sit upon. “To your left. No. Your other left.”
Brom watches my headless corpse stumble around and lets out a low judgmental snort of reproach.
Finally, my body manages to climb back to its feet and turns toward the sound of my voice, its arms outstretched as it blindly gropes the air and takes awkward, stumbling steps toward me.
I just need it to find me and pick me up before it accidentally trips and faceplants onto the sleeping girl.
“Over here, we don’t have all night!” I shout when it begins to stumble again. My gods, they're both useless.