fic_variations | Journey Home (May 2008 challenge, Part 3) (Reply)

Title: Journey Home (Part 3)
Author: occhi_bella
Rating: T
fic_variations Prompt/Claim: Love/Hate, Time
Word Count: 1226
Warnings: Spoilers
Note: Based on an alternate universe in which Ichabod left the book that Katrina gave him behind.
Disclaimer: Sleepy Hollow and its characters do not belong to me. I make no money from this.

Link to first part.

Samuel Philipse Jr. lived in his father’s home still. They entered the house and Ichabod found himself in a narrow hallway. A doorway to his right opened into a large room filled with crates and stacks of papers and books.

“I apologize for the clutter. I’m still sorting through my parents’ things since their deaths,” he explained embarrassedly.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“You knew my father, I believe.”

Ichabod cleared his throat uncomfortably. He had been with Samuel Philipse Sr. when he was killed. “Yes, for a short time.”

“My mother had been ill. After he died, she gave up. Within a week, she had passed on as well.”

“I’m sorry.”

He changed the subject abruptly. “Come. I’ll get you settled.”

They climbed the staircase at the end of the hall and Philipse led him to a small room with a window that looked out onto the grounds behind the house.

“Make yourself comfortable. I’ll send the maid up with water and towels.”

“Thank you very much.”

There was a narrow bed made up with clean white linens and a dark blue and white quilt in the room, a bureau, an end table and a large desk by the window which he set his bags upon. He opened the bag with his equipment and books, withdrawing the new ledger that he’d bought and his case of pen and ink. The ledger contained notes on the new investigation that he had started working on when he returned to the city. Clearing space on the desk and taking a seat, he opened the ledger to a fresh page and jotted down notes concerning the letter he’d received and the odd circumstances that he’d encountered since his arrival. Then he began to make a list of the people in town that he knew, including the younger Philipse, the Van Rippers and the crone from the Western Woods.

The door opened behind him and the maid entered with the water and towels.

“Thank you.”

Ichabod read over what he’d written and frowned. So far he had a puzzling situation and not very much to work with. He rested his chin on his palm and stared at the words he’d written, pondering. His pen was still in his right hand, poised to write. After mulling over his notes for some time he found himself absentmindedly writing the date that he’d left Sleepy Hollow.

It was the stimulus he needed. He raised his head as the idea formed and turned to a new page, dipping his pen in ink and beginning to furiously scribble out a timeline of events. The skirmish in the church had occurred on the thirty-first of October and he’d departed the very next day. On the third of November the two headless corpses of Baltus and Lady Van Tassel were buried, along with the bodies of Dr. Lancaster and Reverend Steenwyck. Between that time and twelve days later the villagers noticed that Katrina and Young Masbath were missing; those were dates for which he would have to pin down a series of events.

The letter from the mysterious entity had arrived on the seventeenth or eighteenth; he received it from the Burgomaster on the morning of the eighteenth and departed the very next morning. His first order of business would be to check the date upon which Philipse had been scheduled to meet with Katrina and work forward from there. He would need to gather information about where each person was at key times. Perhaps someone would recall seeing something and in hindsight view what they had seen with more meaning than they had originally ascribed to it.

He shut the ledger and walked over to the end table across the room. The fatigue of the journey was catching up to him and he was suddenly aware of how grimy he felt. Philipse’s maid had brought a glass and a basin with the pitcher and towels. Ichabod poured water into the basin and leaned over, plunging his hands into the cool water and splashing it on his face. Washing his face and hands refreshed him somewhat.

After toweling himself dry he returned to the desk and picked up the ledger and his case with pen and ink. He left the room and headed downstairs to find Philipse.

“Mr. Philipse?”

“I’m here in the sitting room.”

Ichabod followed the sound of his voice and joined him in the small sitting room behind the staircase. A fire burned in the hearth and Philipse was sitting in one of the armchairs filling a pipe with tobacco.

“Your room is comfortable, I hope.”

“Yes. Thank you for your hospitality. I apologize profusely for the inconvenience. My visit was unexpected as it turns out.”

“It’s no trouble at all. You must have many questions.”

“Well, I did want to confirm some of the dates on which certain events occurred. When were you scheduled to meet with Katrina Van Tassel?”

“Her father and stepmother were buried on the third, along with the others. Katrina was supposed to meet with me four days later. The seventh.”

Ichabod wrote the date down.

“And, when she didn’t appear you went to her house.”

“Yes. She didn’t answer when I knocked. I thought maybe she had forgotten and left a note. When she didn’t come the next day I returned to her house. The note that I had left was gone.”

“You left the note outside the door?”

“It was underneath the door, half in and half out. When I returned there was no sign of it. She must have retrieved it.”

“Or perhaps someone else took it,” he murmured thoughtfully.

“Perhaps. But for what reason?”

“I don’t know. If that’s the case it’s one of the things that I will hopefully figure out. So, you returned that day, the eighth, and found the note gone.”

“She still didn’t answer. I was a little concerned, but I assumed that she was feeling poorly and didn’t wish to be disturbed.”

“And she never sent word that she would be unable to keep your appointment.”

“Nor did she reply to the note that I left.”

“So, you returned a third day?”

He nodded. “On the fourth day Hans Van Ripper and two other men accompanied me. Theodore and Glenn. They took the door off of its hinges and we searched the house. There was no sign of her. We only found the blood on the parlor floor and the chair that I showed you overturned.”

“Then you searched for her elsewhere?”

“Yes. We asked all of the neighbors if they’d seen her. Men searched the woods immediately surrounding the town, the windmills. She was nowhere to be found.”

“What about Young Masbath?”

“Well, we had a meeting in the church about Miss Katrina that evening. One of the women stood up and remarked that she hadn’t seen him either. More people spoke up then, realizing that they also hadn’t seen or heard from him.”

“That was the tenth,” Ichabod said under his breath as he wrote this information down. “Mr. Philipse, I received the letter on the eighteenth, which means it was sent no later than the sixteenth. Is there anything that occurred between the tenth and the sixteenth that I should be aware of?”

“Not really. We continued to search, now seeking both of them, but to no avail. The blood on the floor of the parlor is most likely Katrina’s, but we know nothing further. Some of the women fear that the crone of the Western Woods abducted them. Or that the Hessian killed them and it’s only a matter of time before we find the bodies.”

Ichabod swallowed nervously. His hand was shaking suddenly and he had to stop writing.

“Do you believe that the crone of the Western Woods is involved?”

“As far as I know she’s never harmed anyone. But there are some in town who believe that she made a pact with the devil to summon the Headless Horseman.”

“I see.” He closed his ledger. “Well, I thank you.”

“What will you do now?”

“Now that I have a loose chronology of events that occurred I should like to interview each of the villagers, to find out where they were during key events and to see if they recall seeing or hearing anything.”

“Do you truly suspect that someone in this town would want to harm them?”

“Perhaps someone saw or heard something. If it was before they knew of these disappearances they may have paid it no mind. In hindsight something that they recall witnessing could have new meaning.”

“Possibly. Memory is a funny thing though. People can make themselves remember things that they didn’t actually see or hear.”

“Yes, that is true sometimes. There is also a gap…you discovered that both Katrina Van Tassel and Young Masbath were missing on the tenth of November and a letter was sent on the fifteenth or sixteenth. I know that you were searching for both of them in those days in between. Is there anything else you can tell me? Do you know of anyone who had intended to contact the New York constabulary?”

“I’m afraid there is nothing else to tell, Constable Crane. We searched in vain during those days and after that. It didn’t occur to me to summon you back here and I don’t know of anyone else who was considering it.”

oooOooo

Ichabod knew he was dreaming but he couldn’t make himself wake up, nor could he alter the outcome of the dream.

He was crouched down in the same row of pews. His father emerged from the room behind the red door and Ichabod watched him move down the red carpeted aisle of the church, his collar drawn up; the appearance of the headless man. Then the scene changed and he was inside the prominent white church of Sleepy Hollow, the same red door at the end of the aisle in front of him.

Against his will, he was drawn forward, toward the door and into the room. He knew that he was dreaming the same dream, that there was no such room in the Sleepy Hollow church and that it wasn’t possible that his mother would be here. But the iron maiden still stood before him and he couldn’t help but reach out and open it.

Katrina’s bloody body fell forward and into his arms…

Ichabod woke with a start and bolted upright, gasping for air. Tears were streaming down his cheeks and he was covered in sweat. His eyes began to adjust to the darkness and he glanced around, remembering where he was and the circumstances under which he was here. He eased himself out of bed and moved to the window in the dim light of the waning moon.

He opened the window, allowing the autumn wind to cool him. In the distance there was a low rumble. It might have been thunder except that the night was cloudless and clear. Ichabod recalled the thunderous noise and the lightning-like flashes that scorched through the air when the tangle of roots of the Tree of the Dead opened up into a gaping chasm and the Hessian emerged.

Cursing under his breath, Ichabod shut the window and returned to bed. He remained wide awake, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling, dreading the bad news that was to come.

But morning came and there was no evidence that anything unusual had happened during the night. The locals were going about their business as usual and the town seemed peaceful; at least as peaceful as a town could be when two of its citizens were missing inexplicably.

Ichabod met Hans Van Ripper at the stable and was reunited with Gunpowder. The horse recognized him immediately and butted him gently. Ichabod’s lips curved into a half-smile and he patted Gunpowder’s nose affectionately. The one-eyed steed was somewhat aged and slow, but given Ichabod’s lack of equestrian skills he served just fine.

Eventually he would have to ride out to the Western Woods. No one had searched them and it was quite possible that he would find Katrina and Young Masbath there. But he knew that no one would go with him. He would be going alone.

Right now he couldn’t face that prospect though, and the townspeople had to be questioned anyway. Unfortunately interviewing them was a frustrating process from the moment he commenced it. Many were reluctant to speak with him. Others were eager to bend his ear. He heard stories about the same events that completely contradicted one another, but he made notes on all of them. Somehow he would have to wade through it all and from bits and pieces of each witness’s testimony he would piece together the truth.

All accounts were in agreement that Katrina and Young Masbath had both been present in the cemetery when the bodies were buried. It was after the day of the funerals that accounts became murky and contradictory.

There was a town meeting held in the church on the evening following the day of the burials. The small community had to figure out who would take the places of each of the town’s leaders. According to some accounts, everyone had attended, including Katrina and Young Masbath. Other folks remembered Katrina’s presence at the meeting but not Young Masbath’s; others advised him emphatically that Young Masbath was certainly there but Katrina was not. Still others recalled clearly that neither of them had attended the meeting.

It was very likely that both of them disappeared as early as the fourth of November, the day after the burials; which meant that they were missing for nearly three weeks now.

As with the accounts of the town meeting, he received conflicting information when he asked questions concerning activity around the Van Tassel home. Had anyone seen lights in the window? How soon did they notice that the house remained constantly dark? Did anyone attempt to visit her during the days following the funeral? People often did that to pay their respects and comfort the grieving family. It surprised him that in a small, close-knit town such as this one no one had done so.

Ichabod returned to Philipse’s home late that evening feeling weary and downcast, cursing the day that he had first been sent to this confounded, strange little town.

(continue to next part)