CHAPTER 26
A NEW HOME
John appeared a few minutes later, wrestling with my trunk down the lane. Upon reaching the coach, he heaved into the cab with a grunt and stood breathing heavily, wiping droplets of sweat from his forehead with a discolored handkerchief. "What do you have in that thing, rocks?" he questioned between pants. I only shrugged my shoulders as he climbed into the buggy and took the thick, cracked leather reins.
I looked behind me and gazed at the only place I was ever welcomed into with open arms. It was the only place I felt needed and wanted. Not a flicker of light shone through one of the many glass windows of the manor, and it was only a gloomy mass of shadows in the darkness of the night. It appeared abandoned, more so the abode of scepters, and I expected to see ghastly forms vanish in and about the windows, but the house stood still, as if it hadn't been occupied by neither ghost nor human for decades.
And that's how I felt. My entire body was vacant and empty. I was numb, not even a slight tingling was present. There was no feeling at all. Perhaps it was because the pain that consumed me was far too great to feel.
As the house abruptly disappeared when we rounded a corner, I was hanging onto something that would never be, and yet I could not let go. Ichabod had left me – told me we couldn't be together, but I hung on with white knuckles like my life depended on it, because it truly did. I hid my face from John as tears accumulated in the corners of my eyes. I couldn't let John see me cry, no matter how much pain possessed my heart. Why couldn't I accept the fact that Ichabod and I would never be able to love like a man and a woman should? Why couldn't I accept the fact that Ichabod and I could never walk hand in hand through a meadow of full of blossoms and spring – or attend balls arm in arm while the elders flocked about asking "How are you, Mr. and Mrs. Crane?" I couldn't accept these facts because my very existence depended on them. These facts were purely lies. Ichabod loved me, and one day, even if it were well into the hereafter we would be together, and until then all I had to do was wait.
John halted the horses in front of a two-story building constructed of shale gray stone. Shutters hung crookedly from single hinges that surrounded fractured windows. Shingles threatened to plummet from the roof and the structure itself looked like it could barely survive a slight breeze from the north. "Here we are," John said briskly hoping from the driver's seat and hoisted the chest from the buggy. He followed me up an indistinct dirt path and waited as I knocked patiently on the door of splintered wood. Secretly, I hoped no one would answer, and I thought just that the moment prior to when John said "Just go inside," in a struggling grunt.
A squeak wailed from the hinges when I opened the door, as if it were an old woman moaning when she stretched her limbs. A coal black cat darted from the house and in between my legs letting out a high-pitched screech that I didn't know possible from the vocal cords of a feline. I proceeded into a dimly light foyer and John followed closely behind. He nudged the door shut then let the trunk plunge from his clasp. The chest punched into the aged floors with an echoing thud causing a cloud of dust to erupt from the ground.
"John," I hissed then began to gaze around the room, concealing a look of disgust on my face. A wooden bench pushed against the far wall was the only furnishing in the room. It was grayer than wood should be, for it was encrusted with a thick layer of dust. Opposite the bench a staircase ascended upwards disappearing into a black passage that caused a chill to cloak my bones. The only indication that a person occupied the house was a small candle; it's solitary flame on the verge of death, resting on the first step of the staircase. How odd it was for a candle to be sitting there, but for some reason, it didn't seem out of place in this gloomy edifice.
"Well, just our luck. It appears that no one's home," I said walking swiftly back to the door, anxious to leave the nerve-rending atmosphere of the house.
"Just a moment there, Freckles. You're the one who wants this, remember?" John said taking a hold of my arm. "Hello?" he shouted at the ceiling. The house didn't stir, save for the dull reverberating of his voice.
"Are you satisfied now?" I asked annoyed, taking my arm from his clutch and crossing my arms in front of my chest. "No one's-"
"What the hell do you want?" A raspy voice bellowed from the darkness at the top of the stairs.
I instinctively moved closer to John, and I felt his hand lightly clench my shoulder in reassurance. "The people seem friendly," he whispered in my ear as a hunched over woman emerged from the darkness. She had hair as white as snow plastered to her neck in a braided bun. Shale eyes hid under frosted, bushy brows, and she had cheeks, empty bags of flesh, which sagged to her bowed shoulders. Set is a thin line, her lips were withered almost into nothing, and time had taken toll on her protruding cheekbones, causing them to appear more skeletal than mortal. However, my eyes were drawn to an enormous wart that jutted from her wrinkled chin and a single black hair sprouted from its succulent center.
"You're that Crane girl, aren't you?" the woman breached as she hobbled down the last step of the stairs. She eyed me with a critiquing stare, her left eye twitching. Her face resembled a hawk's, with piercing eyes and an oversized beak of a nose. Though she stood no taller than my shoulder, I knew she would be no one to mess with.
"Not exactly," I gulped. "I'm Melanie Olsen. You're Mrs. Tate?"
"Humph," the old woman barked. "This way."
John and I followed the woman up the stairs and to a room at the end of a long dark hallway. We waited as the woman fumbled with the key in the lock, but the door swung open momentarily, and she quickly struck a match and lit a small candle. Together, the three of us huddled in the small room, and within the trivial flicker of the candle, the woman appeared to be a haunting, deformed creature. John set the trunk down in the center of the room, and I could see a fait gleam of disturbance in the whites of his eyes. There was something about the house he didn't like. There was something about the house that I didn't like either, but I couldn't place my finger directly on it. Though small, the room was furnished; a bed was pushed up against the nearer wall, and a wardrobe sat opposite of that. A rocking chair sat at an angle beneath a rounded window that stared out at Sleepy Hollow completely embraced by the darkness of the moonless night.
"I'll expect you to keep in good condition," Mrs. Tate screeched. "Dinner's served at six, and curfew ten; no visitors past the hour. I collect rent on the first of every month and it's fifty cents per week. Is this understood?"
I only nodded.
"Good. I'll leave you to tend to your belongs then," And with that she shambled out the door.
"You'll become used to it shortly," John tried to reassure me when he saw the awkward expression on my face. "No need to fret."
"I hope so," I murmured opening my trunk and rummaged through its contents.
"I don't suppose you need my assistance in getting settled,""
"No, but I appreciate your assistance earlier, thank you." I didn't even lift my gaze from my trunk.
"I'll see you around town then?"
"Yes."
"I really do like you, Melanie," he blurted and then quickly, his cheeks turning red, hurried towards the door.
"John," I said and he stopped and turned to look at me. "If I don't see you, Merry Christmas."
"You too," he said and smiled before he disappeared into the dark hallway.
I gazed out the window, watching the buggy topple back towards the house. I was alone once again, and my heart hung heavy in my chest. I didn't know why I why I was afraid to love John. He seemed like a man who would care for me and love me, even if I didn't love him, even if he knew I loved another. What if I could end my life in Sleepy Hollow? What if I returned to the city and started a new life…a loveless life? I could become an alcoholic barmaid and slowly erase Sleepy Hollow from my mind. But Ichabod would always bear my heart, and it was because of that I could not leave.