by Kevin A. Ranson:
Ichabod Crane: topics scholared, tyrants patrioted and relationships advised.
Awaiting Abbie’s return from visiting with her sister, Crane laments the loss of his wife Katrina, a heartfelt story offered to console a downtrodden NorthStar rep who graciously unlocked the car doors for him (is there anything Ichabod can’t do?) A speeding van roars past Crane as Abbie appears with news of Jenny’s escape; Captain Irving agrees to hold off launching a nationwide manhunt for 24 hours to allow the Witnesses a chance to locate her first.
Slipping quietly into a seedy bar, Jenny obtains a custom “world’s going all to hell” kit kept for her by the owner, Wendel. Not long after her departure, a man with a German accent and a pair of thugs arrive – along with a choice set of tools with which to question the bartender. Helping Abbie with research, Crane learns that Jenny was quite the globetrotter for a number of years before being caught, but why return to Sleepy Hollow at all? Abbie confesses that she and Jenny’s father bailed before their mother was hospitalized, so the state dumped them into foster care.
While Irving investigates another decapitation at the bar – specifically Wendel’s – Crane and Abbie investigate the foster home Jenny stayed at the longest for clues on where she might go. Abbie is less than impressed with the woman’s “care” but learns about a cabin at Trout Lake and a previously unknown relationship between Jenny and Sheriff Corbin. At the cabin – Corbin’s cabin, actually – Jenny and Abbie confront one another at gunpoint while trading barbs, but Crane diffuses the situation with his usual charm and a bit of truth. Jenny admits that she was acquiring artifacts under Corbin’s direction.
The good sheriff also contacted Jenny the night before he died, asking her to protect a specific item: a revolution-era sextant. While Crane explains that the Boston Tea Party was actually an organized diversion by Samuel Adams (sure, why not?), he recounts raiding a British warehouse to recover a “new weapon” guarded by a Hessian – just like that Headless guy. The guard blew himself up, but Crane survived to recover the unknown contents sealed into a stone chest before shipping it off to George Washington to be hidden again.
Crane demonstrates the sextant’s true function: a hidden projector with a map of Sleepy Hollow and the whereabouts of the stone chest. Without warning, gunmen assault the cabin and make off with the sextant, but Wendel’s torturer – bearing the mark of Reinhessen – is captured by our heroes and questioned. “Gunther” confesses that he and an unknown number of his fellow Hessians are hidden around town like sleeper agents, but his friends have the map to “The Lesser Key of Solomon,” a book of dark magic for unleashing 72 demons upon the world.
After hinting that the Blur Demon is the grand architect of everything going on is Sleepy Hollow, Gunther utters the phrase “Moloch shall rise” before killing himself with a cyanide pill. Fortunately, Crane’s photographic memory serves him well enough to duplicate the map and the hiding place of the stone chest: the Dutch Reformed church. While Jenny impresses Crane with tales of international freedom fighting on their way to the church, Gunther’s men have already uncovered the chest and use the tome.
With the gateway opening, Crane and the sisters arrive before the demons can escape, dispatching the thugs before tossing the tome into the portal and sealing it shut. Abbie reconciles with Jenny, offering to get her sister out of the system by taking legal responsibility for her. Quoting from Milton’s Paradise Lost, Crane backs up the Hessian’s words: the Blur Demon is Moloch, the god-demon of child sacrifice and parents’ tears.
♪ “So be good, for goodness’ sake! Whoa…! Somebody’s coming…!” ♪
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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