4. Chapter 4
Victor Crane
The wind whistles through the bare branches of the haunted Hollow, biting into the flesh of my exposed arms. I squeeze Catherine closer against my chest, her curvy but small frame shivering against me, a stark reminder of how incredibly fragile she is out here among the predators in the dark.
Midnight is a cruel clock ticking away at the few precious hours I'm permitted to feel the world in this body, with warm skin and beating blood instead of cold woods and vines.
Ahead, the trail bends sharply along an old outcropping of rock and weathered old fencerow, making my jaw tighten. Even with a pumpkin for a head, the memory of this specific patch of earth lights a fire in me that burns like a brand.
Two hundred years ago, on this exact stretch of land, my stallion and I met with the witch.
I can still hear her shrill and cackling laughter echoing through time.
I still feel the agonizing heat and pain of the curse that fused my skull with the rot of autumn and turned my majestic and faithful mount into a creature of flames.
Every Halloween, passing across this spot of ground triggers a bitter and hollow anguish that pierces my very soul.
But tonight, when my horse’s flaming hooves strike the cursed patch of dirt, the expected ache is missing.
The familiar and anticipated pain doesn't come.
Instead, a new sort of shockwave ripples through my chest, and I gasp, watching in absolute stupefaction as an iridescent line of pure magical energy begins to pulse down in the shadows in between our bodies.
It weaves directly out of my chest and glows with the heat of a dying star as it snakes and ripples, roiling forward to wrap itself around Catherine's wrist.
My heart begins to hammer like a hummingbird inside my ribcage against her back as realization dawns. She's my mate.
This bright, glowing thread is my mate's bond showing itself to me.
I have to stop myself from squeezing her to me like a madman and never letting her go. But instead I keep my hands lax and steady even as they start to shake.
For centuries I've been a monster hidden in these hills, a legend whispered about by the superstitious locals to scare away the children who wander near the borders of Frank Stein’s sprawling estate.
Yet the universe has granted me a boon. In all its twisted irony, my fated mate has been delivered directly into my lap, falling right into my arms from the heavens on the one night that I'm made human enough to hold her.
And she's literally a human girl that fell into my quiet patch of dirt.
“Victor?” Catherine's voice is reedy and thin as if breathless with panic as she notices the thread glowing between our bodies. “What is this? What's happening to me?”
A low growl echoes from right behind us, and I realize I've got to get her to the lodge, and fast. The supernatural can recognize when someone isn't one of them, and her humanness will draw out all sorts of predators tonight without her wearing a disguise.
A human without a costume in the haunted Hollow on Halloween night is more than a moth to a flame.
It's magic, and they won't be able to help themselves.
I’ve got to get her out of here, fast.
“What is that?” she asks, turning her head to the skies.
“We need to get you out of here.”
She leans back into my chest, and the rightness of it overrides all else.
“I’ve got you, Catherine. Ride, Brom!” I roar, gripping her to me and digging into Brom's flanks, sending him at an unnatural speed. I pull his reins tight and try to hold on, burying my face in the sweet scent of her hair as his canter rolls into a hard gallop. “Just hold on!”
A few seconds later, the hunting lodge looms through the trees like a welcoming beacon of safety against a pitch black night sky, and I allow myself to relax if only a fraction.
The moon has been swallowed by clouds, but I know none of that matters now. It doesn't matter when the moon will leave the sky tonight because my mate is here.
I yank hard at the reins just as Brom slides into a dramatic halt right at the edge of the porch, his flaming hooves kicking up a shower of dirt and glowing orange sparks that quickly die out in the chilly air.
A screech sounds from the dark tree line behind us, a wraith traveling too close for comfort, but the heavy oak doors of the house are only a few short steps away.
“Come along,” I say, my carved mouth twisting toward the sky as I quickly dismount. I reach up and lift Catherine's curvy form from the saddle, her weight sure and voluptuous in my arms.
She glances down at the line of the mate bond that still pulses softly between us, a golden thread of light tying her wrist to me, but there's no time to explain now.
She looks back at Brom as I set her down on the porch steps. “What about your horse? We can't just leave him out here with those…. Whatever that is!” she shouts when howls start up again above us.
“He’ll be fine,” I murmur, knowing nothing supernatural will harm him as I usher her toward the door.
I glance back at my steed who tosses his fiery mane and snorts.
A wraith will have no interest in him and I don't think anything will be tangling with Brom tonight, but if they do, my money is on the horse.
“He knows his way to the stable and will want to eat his fill of oats before he's allowed any apples tonight, even though he’s not earned them.”
I push open the heavy timber door and nudge Catherine gently inside the lodge just as another unnatural howl rips through the valley, then slam the door shut behind us. It’ll be gone soon, no doubt.
I turn back to face the room and set about lighting the hearth until it's a warm, crackling, roaring fire.
It casts long shadows across the old wooden beams and sleek furniture Frank Stein has added to the place over the years. But this year I notice how the firelight only makes the glowing thread between us stand out more.
Catherine takes a few steps backward, her blue eyes darting from the glowing line on her arm up to my carved face. “Victor, what's happening? You need to tell me what this is, and just what exactly you are.”
I take a slow heavy breath, my chest rising with the motion as my pumpkin headed mouth forms and tenses into a hard and serious line. I look down at my gloved hands and flex my fingers, noting how real and solid they feel.
“I suppose you know the legends of the Hollow,” I begin. “You know, the stories that people tell around campfires on Halloween night about the rider with a pumpkin for a head.”
Her breath hitches and her gaze widens as she connects the pieces. “You’re the headless horseman.”
“Yes. I am,” I murmur softly, the fire in my eyes pulsing with a low and somber light.
“Two hundred years ago, an old witch stole my mortality. She cursed my horse to breathe fire and she later took my human head from my body, replacing it with this,” I say.
I gesture at my big, carved orange skull.
“For three hundred and sixty-four days a year I'm bound to these woods as a monster.
I can't feel. In the first few months I couldn't speak. But on Halloween night it all stops for these fleeting hours. The veil is thin tonight and the curse cracks just enough to grant me access to my human body… but it only lasts until the stroke of midnight.”
I step closer, careful not to break whatever trust is holding her in place. The glowing thread between us hums with a warm and electric energy, and I need it to stay that way.
“But tonight is very, very different,” I mutter, looking down at the magical line. “This magic between us only appears when two beings are meant for one another. They are fated to belong to each other. You're my mate, Catherine.”
She opens her mouth to speak but I stop her.
“I know it's a lot to take in,” I continue, my voice softening as I reach out and let my fingertips hover above the pulsing mate bond at her wrist. “You don't have to agree to anything at all. And I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to run, but it seems the old witch’s curse has a loophole after all. You're the only person in two centuries that can help me find where my real skull is hidden and break this nightmare for good. Please say you’ll help an old pumpkin out?”
Catherine Van Tassel
I stare at his moving mouth, my breath catching in my throat as his words begin to sink in. The fireplace behind him crackles, casting long shadows around the house, but all I can focus on is the terrifying truth of what he is.
I can’t believe the fairytales are real, but he has a pumpkin for a head. What else am I to do but believe him?
“Two hundred years ago, you see, I was just a regular man. My family, all gone now of course, tended these fields,” Victor says, his tone serious as his gaze darts over me, as if assessing whether I'm going to bolt for the door or not.
“One day after a rather bad storm, I found a young woman stranded in the mud.
Her carriage axle had broken and was splintered.
I didn't know at the time that she was a vengeful and spiteful witch and I lifted her onto my horse and brought her safely home to her parents.”
I watch him, my insides roiling as my chest rises and falls, somehow hearing him over the roaring in my ears.
He’s serious. This is real.
“She took my kindness in bringing her home for something more,” he continues, his mouth grimacing.
“She became obsessed and a week later I met her sister. Unlike the witch, the younger sister was sweet and we crossed paths in the valley. I was stupid in my youth and kissed her, not knowing her older sister watched from the tree line and a jealous and blinding rage consumed her.”
He lifts his hands and gestures toward the pumpkin atop his shoulders.
“After my death, she took my head from my corpse, binding my soul to the rotting autumn soil in the process. She turned my horse to flame and smoke and condemned me to live as a pumpkin until the end of time.”
I stare at him, my brain a whirlwind of chaos as I try to make sense of what he’s saying. “And you want me to help you get your skull back?” I ask dumbly.
“Yes. There's no magical cure, unfortunately. Not until you. There's been no escape or counter curses that can help. But I know where she buried my head, inside her own grave in the county over, just so that no one could ever steal it back from her and break the curse.”
My gaze drops to my wrist and the faint magical line that floats between us with an electric energy. I’m bound to a monster. Well, a man turned monster.
He reaches out, his fingers wrapping around mine, and the heat of his skin through his glove sends a sudden, fierce wave of current through me, making my heart gallop for a new reason.
This is so strange.
“You’re the only one that can help me, Catherine.”
My legs are suddenly Jell-o and ever so heavy. “Victor,” I say, my voice cracking strangely at the end. “ I think my legs are giving out,” I say as if I'm commenting on the weather, as my knees buckle, not for the first time tonight.
Before I can hit the hardwood, Victor moves to catch me in his arms. An unfamiliar pull tugs at my chest when he does, and it sends my heart thumping into overdrive.
The sensation isn’t altogether unpleasant, but it is intense, this sudden and unexplainable feeling of safety I get from him, which makes no sense. I don't even know this… man? Creature? His face is the crooked grin of a jack-o’-lantern and by all accounts he’s a monster.
Yet my whole body is screaming out that I'm exactly where I'm meant to be.
“Whoa, easy there,” he murmurs, his tone one of deep concern as he firmly but gently guides me across the room to ease me down into a plush armchair before the fire.
A thick wool blanket appears in his gloved hands, and he pulls it around my shoulders, which I only now realize are trembling.
His touch is surprisingly tender for someone built like a brawny broad-shouldered woodsman and he hovers a moment as if trying to assure himself I'm not going to slide out of the chair before he steps back to give me some breathing room and begins pacing across the floorboards.
“I’ve no right to ask it of you, but you’re my only hope,” he says, his deep voice dropping another octave and thick with frustration.
“Not only did the spiteful witch curse me, she made sure that I could never escape. You see I’m physically bound to this land and I can't cross the county line where she’s buried.
There's a barrier around this Hollow that acts like a solid wall that tears at my magic if I try to get close.”
He stops his pacing and turns his pumpkin face toward me and the candlelight there flickers.
“But our mate bond, this thin thread between us, means that you could walk with me. If you hold my hand across the barrier, your presence should anchor me, and I can cross over it to finally get my head back. Please. Please say you’ll help me, Catherine. ”