We had arrived early to the burial grounds to set up a proper post. Valen had Lloyd and I making traps in the surrounding area. Spirit or not, his horse would become susceptible to getting caught in a trap. Unless that too was an evil spirit. My hands worked nervously as I tried to get things prepared as fast as I could.
“Hage, back at the mayor’s office you seemed a bit on the edge,” Lloyd said. He must have detected my unease when the Headless Horseman was mentioned. I hadn’t told him yet about my dreams, but I knew I would have to sooner rather than later. “Are you alright?”
“No... I’m not,” I admitted, ceasing my hands from their work for a moment. “Ever since we came to this town, I’ve been having... dreams of sorts. Hallucinations too.”
“About what?” Lloyd asked. “About the Headless Horseman? Don’t tell me you believe these people’s superstitious folklore.”
“That’s the thing, Lloyd,” I argued. “I have seen him myself. When we first arrived here on that foggy night. I saw him behind us. I froze for a moment back there. That was why. Because I saw him!”
“No, you didn’t, runt,” Valen said, cutting between Lloyd and I. “Your weak mind just got the best of you.”
“Then what about the dreams?” I asked aloud. It was just us three out there. Valen had sent Mr. Crane back to the Van Tassel’s home for the night as a precaution. “And what about this?”
I pulled out Orin’s token. Valen and Lloyd looked at it wide-eyed. It was a spectacle, for sure. Valen snatched it from my hand without even hesitating. He looked at it, front and back, and all sides around.
“Where did you get this?” the veteran ranger asked. The sun was retreating and the dusk fog was beginning to set in for the night. We had a couple of hours at best.
“Orin gave it to me when he adopted to me,” I said in panic. Lloyd gave me a strange look. I hadn’t told him that I was adopted yet. Considering my current streak, I figure I would have to talk to him about that. But not now. Now we had to deal with other issues at hand. I just hoped he wouldn’t hold it against me. “Right before we had to leave.”
“This looks old, very old,” Valen noted. He was vague, but still very much on the dot. “This looks like Ontiman design. Have you been figuring out what it does or how it works?”
“It lets me see things,” I said. Now I was being vague, but I was still being very much correct in my statement. I took it back from Valen to demonstrate. “Show me the Headless Horseman.”
The token lit up, rippling and constantly morphing the light that was coming from it like a body of water. Valen and Lloyd looked at the device in shock. After a couple of moments, the image showed an open field. There were some kind of stonework sticking up from the ground in a couple of different places. In the center were three figures. The scene appeared to be getting larger and larger by the second.
“Wait a second... that’s us,” Lloyd said, sounding like he had picked up on something. He then pointed to the trinket. “But if that’s us, then where is... ”
Just then the sound of a horse galloping roughly through wet earth silenced us. Valen readied his bow and had an arrow drawn. Lloyd took a second longer to do the same.
“Ready yourselves!” Valen commanded as the galloping grew louder and louder with each second. The Headless Horseman was here, ready to take on our challenge. I got a vague feeling that we were somehow responsible for summoning this evil spirit. “Lets see how real this thing is.”
I did what I could to get myself ready fro something that had been possibly ready for me for a couple of days now. I was getting really nervous and afraid of taking him on. I had no idea if ranger arrows were going to have any effect on him. Why was did he have his sights on me? Why the mind games? I didn’t know. I was afraid. But I had to stand my ground. The only place we could run back to was back to town, but then we would be putting Mr. Crane and everyone else there at risk.
Just then, out of the fog, he broke through with an evil and furious presence. His horse stood at a great height and moved with a strong pace. The entire beast was covered with a dark haze of blackness. I swore, I saw black smoke trailing from it. The rider himself rode with a very menacing nature. He had one hand on the rein and the other brandishing a jack-o-lantern.
Instead of lobbing our heads off when he got the chance, the horseman launched his pumpkin at our feet, exploding it into hundreds of gooey pieces. His missile attack prevented Valen or Lloyd from getting a shot off and when he was riding off, the thick fog covered his escape. Neither of them could shoot him through the fog, but Valen fired one anyway. I could hear the rider’s horse whinny off in the distance.
“Well I guess you aren’t crazy,” Lloyd summed up after our brief encounter with the Headless Horseman.
“That remains to be seen,” Valen commented, who had withdrawn his bow. “Still, I’m curious as to why he let us off with just a warning shot. Haunting evil spirits usually don’t do that.”
There was that. We headed back to the Van Tassel’s when we were done, but decided to leave the traps. Just in case. We didn’t want to take any chances.
