by Kevin A. Ranson:
With the kind of visions Ichabod Crane endures, does he ever get any sleep?
Running not just from ol’ Headless but all Four Horseman, the vines of a tree drag Crane under the earth where Katrina awaits to inform him that an “army of evil” will precede the Horsemen. “The first arrives with the blood moon; she’s one of us,” she warns before he awakens.
While Crane figures out modern convenience like showers and coffee makers – guided by yellow stickies – Captain Irving shows Abbie a video that contradicts what she and Crane saw happen in Andy’s cell. Irving says he thinks Crane is delusional, but inexplicably suggests Abbie continue to work with him (no, that doesn’t sound suspicious at all). Over at the coroner’s office, the Blur Demon brings “flip-top” Andy back from the dead and – for his next trick – makes Andy cough up an antique amulet.
Crane informs Abbie of his vision – as well as his outrage over the bakery tax for the tasty doughnut holes Abbie brought for breakfast. With Abbie attending Sheriff Corbin’s funeral, Crane discerns that Katrina implied a witch when she said “her own.” That night, Andy uses his Amulet of Phlegm to call forth a smoldering ghost, instructing her to take “the flesh of the pious to reclaim her own.”
The next morning, Crane challenges Abbie’s paranormal doubts by citing her clear fondness of the sheriff; Abbie confesses that the sheriff caught her doing crime and gave her the chance she needed to clean up her act. When Abbie and Crane later investigate a charred corpse in a burned out car – the same one Andy had pulled over the previous night – something had clearly been removed from his chest. Crane recounts a story from his era where an entire regiment was murdered in the same way, believed to be the work of a dark witch.
To satisfy the curiosity of Officer Luke at the station – deducing him to be a former flame of Abbie’s – Crane makes up a cover story about being an Oxford history professor on holiday as a consultant. Hey, can Crane explain why the signs inside an upper New York state police station are duplicated in Spanish? Perhaps not, but he does know a secret passage into the storage area with the sheriff’s files (that no one else has apparently found in almost 250 years) that is also conveniently stocked with undisturbed witch bones and crates of centuries-old gunpowder – gee, will those be important later?
Andy appears again, asking the name of a young boy; uh oh. After Crane finishes bragging about his eidetic memory and the languages he knows, Corbin’s files reveal that a witch named Serilda of Abaddon was trapped by the Sisterhood of the Radiant Heart, a benevolent coven – hey, witches can fly! – before being burned at the stake while vowing revenge. Crane and Abbie find the home of the boy by his name, but the witch only sought the ashes of the adopted boy’s father.
Following Crane’s scolding of Abbie for a poor British impersonation, they head for the tunnels where the witch bones are buried – and Andy is already there digging them up. Serilda has already completed her spell to become flesh again, catching Crane’s bullet (Guns carry more than one bullet? Who knew?) before he and Abbie use the aforementioned gunpowder to destroys the Greek-speaking witch.
Crane goes for coffee at the station, giving Abbie time for a friendly haunting by Sheriff Corbin. He gives her a quick pep talk before disappearing, adding not to fear “number forty-nine” – a number that just happens to be the room number at the asylum where Abbie’s sister Jennifer is staying.
Two weeks, two monsters, but John Cho and Clancey Brown are still in the cast, so that’s a good thing!
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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