by Kevin Ranson:
Hudson Valley, New York, 1781. Fighting for the Colonists, Ichabod Crane is called into battle and targets a masked Hessian soldier with a brand on his sword hand and a tattoo on the back of his bald head. After receiving a fatal wound in the Redcoat’s attack, Crane takes the man’s head before falling himself. Their split blood mingles together atop of a stone slab with an intricately carved design….
In a subterranean cavern, Crane awakens as though from the dead. Surrounded by shattering jars housing individual reptiles, he stumbles though a hidden door into a world he’s never known: Sleepy Hollow, circa 2013.
So begins the story of Rip Van Winkle – sorry, I meant Ichabod Crane, um – hmm. There may be a meshing of ideas here, all brought to you by the writers of “Fringe,” the director of Underworld and the imagination of George Washington Irving.
Sheriff Corbin and Officer Abbie are called out to a local stable because of the horses being spooked. It’s okay, though – the Headless Horseman just needed to find a pale horse before separating the sheriff’s head from his shoulders (yes, the Kurgan loses his head… again). Abbie calls in the homicide just as Officer Andy spots and arrests a suspicious-looking Ichabod Crane in another part of town.
As Crane recounts his last moments of life with his wife Katrina at his side, he claims to be a British defector working for General George Washington against the forces of tyranny – passing a lie detector test even while learning he is almost 250 years displaced. Knowing Crane isn’t a crackpot based on his testimony and what she saw herself, Abbie volunteers to transport the suspect to a psych ward for a chance to interrogate him – with Captain Irving’s blessing. Can the namesake of the author who wrote both “Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” be trusted? Probably, but we’ll see.
For a man out of time, Crane catches on quickly. That he has risen with purpose isn’t lost on him, nor is the fact that no one believes him or Abbie, and that makes her an ally. At her request, Crane shows the officer the cavern where he awoke and finds a Bible there that was buried with him marked to the Book of Revelations. Is the Horseman actually Death, the first of four such horseman? Speaking of which, the Headless One is looking for something, killing the local magic-using priest – wait… what? – for refusing to tell him where is.
It turns out Abbie and her sister Jenny have a prior history with the supernatural: four white trees and a demon. After putting Crane in a cell, she explores the headless sheriff’s office to discover that he’d been investigating many odd cases since what happened to Abbie years ago, finding a map of incident locations. Crane, on the other hand, is imparted more info – via a dream vision – by his dead witch of a wife: she is trapped between worlds, and if this horseman reclaims his head, the other three of the Apocalypse will come.
Crane suspects where the horseman’s head is hidden, but when Abbie calls Andy for help, the Horseman is already there for Andy’s help, too – whoops! – and Ol’ Headless doesn’t just have a fetish for burning broad axes. Katrina’s grave in the town cemetery is actually where the head was hidden; a Headless shootout follows. Andy whacks Abbie to help the Horseman – to protect her? Seriously, Andy? – before she gets the upper hand. After the coming dawn seems to chase the Horseman away, Abbie’s blurred demon pays the arrested Andy a visit; using him as a human PEZ dispenser does well to silence him.
Off to a good start; let’s see where it all goes!
Kevin A. Ranson is the author of The Spooky Chronicles and the vampire thriller The Matriarch. He also the creator/critic for MovieCrypt.com and the “ghost writer” for its horror host Grim D. Reaper (often seen skulking around horror conventions). Find him on Facebook, on Twitter @KevinARanson, and his author blog at ThinkingSkull.com.
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