Authors Note:
This is my AWARD-WINNING “killer ending” for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by James Irving. This story ends on a cliffhanger, thus I had the opportunity last year to create a satisfying ending for it in my creative writing class. Enjoy!
Last Chapter of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow
I
A great apeiro-mitosis of the soul, infinite splitting moments converged in uncountable mirrored lives gone by. Geometric dimensions unseen by mortal eyes, shifting fourth dimensional trianguloids conversing with oblong ellipsoid masks, rainbow colors and countless impossible spectrums of beginnings and ends. The dream of death, a dream undone…
In the first light of dusk lay the orange gourd of Ichabod, face carved menacingly with jagged features demonic over its slow-burning candles. His clothes, scattered around it, were dirty with mud ripped and torn. Five old, ancient women, wrinkled like leather long with age, traveled dutifully to the man Ichabod’s remains. They carried chimes and bells, adorned in long black cloaks of raven feathers, chanting low dark prayers as they examined the remains under the damp morning twilight.
“There goes another poor, poor soul…” Quietly spoke a crone as she bowed her head in tearful grief, She lifted the jack-o-lantern and slowly set it upon the carried wooden litter. “We must bring it to master.”
“Not poor, this one!” The wisest remarked with a sneer, large, dragging chains burdening the woman’s every movement. Her heavy bells chimed low and morose. She was the chant-leader, the oldest who did not help with the carrying of this litter. “This one had pride in his sinful soul! Do not forget. God’s judgment cannot reach him now.”
“God’s judgment cannot reach him now,” repeated the youngest, busheled hair only touched by gray with age. “For the good of all souls.”
“For the good of all souls.” All chanted, except the elder, who walked with them in silence for the rest of the journey home.
…And in this mitosis the conscious essence of what lived diverged into infinite shards, and re-coalesced in finality back into the very world he died. White light shined and blinded Ichabod’s eyes, squinting and furrowing to no avail. His body was weak, any conscious movement causing great stress on his newly-reanimated flesh, as if laying wrapped in ghost chains to great stones. The blinding luminescence receded to a single candle in the corner of the stone cellar. Its candle-wax melted atop a small bronze saucer.
Darkness.
Ichabod felt strange, and all memories of this dream coalesced back into his sore wandering mind. The splitting shapes, the strange white emptiness as a million years passed in seconds’ time. Was that death? His mind faltered, lost in dizzy thought, and Ichabod realized he was very dehydrated. He relapsed back into reality, and stared into the eyes of a bright-irised woman teetering at the edge of youth. Ichabod screamed! Kicking and pushing himself against the wall in hysteric fear. “AhhhhaAAHH! Get away, get away!” He flung his hands over his face, pathetically protecting himself from this witch’s hexing spells. He shivered, shaking in terror, eyes wide and bulging – as a soldier plagued by war neurosis.
“Silence, rekindled one,” Said she, in a calm and soothing timbre. Ichabod’s terror broke immediately.
II
The longhouse was warm and dimly lit. A great fire burned in a central hearth of stockpiled woods, its smoke coalescing beneath the open chimney above. Ichabod stood in front of a great wooden throne, guarded by two red-hooded figures with many others watching from the shadows at each side.
“Hello… Ichabod.” Spoke the magnificent Brom Bones, in exquisite furs and linen, his chest exposed, lazily slouched in a wooden throne with that smirky, arrogant smile of his. “It looks like we had quite the feud in the ballroom…” Brom paused, gracefully taking a wine-chalice from his cupbearer. “…where we battled for dominance over this beautiful, precious woman here… my, Katerina!” She appeared with slow noble elegance from behind the throne, giving a formal kiss on Bronn’s cheek. She turned to eye Ichabod with a sinister smile.
“Now that we are all here,” announced Brom, raising his gold wine chalice up. “We must get along with our testimony.” He cleared his throat, ploddingly drinking from the jewel-encrusted glass. Brom drank for a very long time – his courtiers and strange hooded men patiently waiting, arms folded in their sleeves.
“Why have you brought me here, what is the meaning of this!?” Ichabod yelled in a helpless cry, interrupting the great rulers’ drink. The right guard kicked him in the liver, having fallen curled if not for the support of the red-robed servants.
“DO NOT INTERRUPT MY HOLY RITUAL, UGLY MAN!” Bronn roared. The chalice flew from his hand, crashing onto the floor as its heavy silver-white liquid spewed out like slag across the carpet. He stared with fiery eyes at Ichabod, with a mouth covered in gray plaster, before continuing on with a calm courtesy. “But do not fret that we are at all angry, Ichabod.” He chuckled, “…for you are the blessing for which we thank! The sacrifice to be made to rid us of the darkness of the Great Hessian.”
Bronn began to giggle humorously.
“You!” He rused, “The undying, the one who will stamp out the Headless One and his horrid realm-devouring powers. Who would have thought it!” He guffawed, then a quiet pause ensued. His face stared deep and strenuously. “.For it just so happens… that your soul – yours! is the one!” He giggled again, spilling into a hysterical fit of laughter with a pointed finger at Ichabod. “THE CHOSEN ONE? AHAHAHAHAHA!” And then a roar of mass hysteria surged around the two-hundred-odd members of the great longhouse. Their hoods fell off as the dark decrepit monks revealed their faces during the wild, frantic laughter.
Hans Van Ripper, the Story-teller, Old Brower, Tilda, and the boastful Doffue, as well as many of the streetboys, and others of Sleepy Hollow. All laughing and funneling insults at his very being. Everyone he knew and more.
“ICHABOD CRANE! AHAHAHA!”
“THE DECREPIT RAT!” Screamed Hans!
“THE FOOL WHO COURT’NT!” Exclaimed Baltus Van Tassel, red face and eyes bulging from laughter.
“PRIDEFUL!”
“UGLY BAFFOON!”
Stones from the different children were thrown at him, knocking off his head. He fell but was forced back up. “AHAHAHAHAHA BWAHAHAHA MWAHAHAHA OOOOOOOOOOOHHHAWAHAHAHA!”
` “SILENCE!” Roared Brom Bones loud and long, his wrathful cry quieting all into submission. Ichabod shook violently, staring into the eyes of his rival, powerless in confusion and fear.
“What are you looking at me for? Take him to the pit! Rid us of him!”
“RID US OF HIM, HE WHO INVADES OUR SLEEPING HOLLOW.” The crowd chanted loud and screaming. Ichabod was given another kick, and was dragged out as a mob of red-robed men led him to the great yard. “HRUMADUM HRUMADUM HRUMADUM HRUMADUM,” yelled and chanted the surge of men and women carrying him to the central plaza. Shaman-priestesses stood around a great bonfire sacrificing a goat to a strange god, shrieking howls and screams bawled from the crones for the darkness of the Hessian to dissipate in Ichabod’s infinite sacrifice for the greater good
“Begone Thanatos guided by Hades! He who kills with the sword, first harbinger of last judgment! Hram! Hram! Hram!” Chanted the oldest elder with a screeching thrill. The crones groaned and cried wordlessly, as the goat howled with fires churning below it. Ichabod screamed, being led to the fire by the frenzied horde. “The first seal hath been broken!” Screamed the elder again, “May this chain of Ichabod reforge its locking hold!” He was surged further toward the great altar, the crones shrieking atonal groans of horrid dissonance.
But when all action seemed to climax, the earth shook and quaked with ferocity unseen in this land, and all men and women collapsed. A great blast from the east shook all to their very core, and from that direction charged Thanatos, the Headless One, first harbinger of the apocalypse, the figure of death! He in his gloomy mist charging on his sable-black mount crashed through the crowd, slicing through the horde of worshippers as they fled in divine terror. “He has come! The end has come!” They screamed.
Ichabod fled frantically into the dark woods, stumbling into a great ridge under whose roots gave him shelter. He shook, traumatized with fear as thoughts raped through his mind. Sleep took him there, collapsing under exhaustion at that very moment as if under a strange hypnosian spell.
And there again, the great horseman came, trotting along the wilderness edge when Ichabod awoke.
In that wilderness, in front of that broken ridge, the horseman stood dismounted with his great scimitar. “Ichabod Crane.” Spoke the dark figure with a heavy basso voice that resonated in the deepest part of Ichabod’s mind, soothing him into submission to this demon’s will. And through innumerable words the horseman seemed to slowly possess Ichabod, clinging onto his body and into his mind before all motor functions and mind where connected and in control of this host by the demonic spirit. Darkness spread over all aspects of Ichabod’s consciousness, until naught was ever after conceived by his mind or soul.
