The Sleepy Hollow Incident
Sneak Peek: Chapters 1 & 2
Hello Readers,
Happy Sunday Morning,
We are less than a week away when ARC readers will receive Part One of The Sleepy Hollow Incident. I’ve had a tremendous response but there’s always room for more readers to join the team. Below is a sneak peek of chapters one and two for your reading eyes to indulge in. Remember, other than future sneak peeks, The Sleepy Hollow Incident will not be available through our normal reading modalities, one chapter at a time until the book is finished. Instead, each part will be sent via email one part at a time and only to readers who have specifically signed up for the opportunity. In order to join as an ARC reader, all you have to do is send an email to pd@pdalleva.com and I’ll add you to the team. Please reference, The Sleepy Hollow Incident in the subject line.
We will be sending out one part from the book per month until late September (there are nine parts in total). ARC team members will receive an emailed link once per month and will be able to contribute and offer feedback in a private group where book club questions will be provided. I hope you all take advantage of this unique opportunity.
If you’d like to read more about the ARC opportunity and read the full book description, please click here.
Enjoy the chapters. Hope to see you on the team.
Keep reading,
PD Alleva
Part I
Sleepy Hollow, NY
February 1997
Chapter 1
The winter storm arrived with a vengeance and seemed to come out of nowhere. Sheets of snow blanketed a small parking lot as FBI agent Henry Clavell parked his rented SUV. He had no business in Sleepy Hollow other than personal, but he’d been drawn into a situation that was beyond his understanding. He’d made the trek all the way from the Hamptons to the small riverside town of Sleepy Hollow. All to help a friend at the request of the mother.
He waited in his SUV, watching the red and blue lights troll across the shabby one-floor motel. Why a woman with such a prominent background would choose to stay in what was clearly a trap house for local addicts was beyond his comprehension. Made no sense to him whatsoever. Firefighters, policemen, and paramedics stood around the open motel room door. Most of them with startled expressions, lost in maddening thought over what they’d seen in the room with the door wide open. Henry watched as Captain Flannery appeared in the doorway, obviously staring in his direction, waiting for Henry.
That’s my cue!
Henry climbed out of his SUV, his heart hammering like a rabbit in his chest. When he first received the call from Flannery, he wished he’d never come to Sleepy Hollow. It’s true that no good deed goes unpunished, because here he was, in the middle of a murder scandal he was sure would add a new lore to the Sleepy Hollow mystique.
He locked eyes with Flannery, who waved him over before stepping back inside. From Henry’s vantage point, he could see there was little light in the room. Looked like a deep black hole filled with fear and anguish that he did not want to cross. But he knew he had to. He’d come this far and was so deep in the situation there was no possible method he could find to turn and go home and forget all about Sleepy Hollow. Forget Lori Francon, the reason he’d come in the first place.
Henry held his coat close to his throat as he walked to the room, snow pelting him in every direction. Noticed the awestruck stare in the eyes of the officer who stood outside the motel room. Looked like he’d seen a ghost, or he was about to puke all over the parking lot. Henry always had difficulty deciphering the two.
It was dark inside the motel room, although not total darkness. Flannery had a small light set up in the corner that did its best to illuminate the gruesome scene.
“I got more lights coming,” said Flannery, standing beside the bed, and staring at Henry.
Henry had no love for Captain Flannery. In fact, he understood the captain’s skepticism about Henry’s arrival, considering the string of bodies that blanketed his town since Henry first walked into Sleepy Hollow. But that was just coincidence, and what Henry knew all too well about police officers is that they never believe in coincidence. Henry met Captain Flannery when he went to speak with the officer in charge of the case, Detective Stephen Carver, about his friend, Lori Francon. Unfortunately, Detective Carver hasn’t been seen since yesterday, adding to the mounting pile of suspicions in Captain Flannery’s brain.
Henry had no response for Flannery. He was too preoccupied with taking in the scene. There was a body beneath the bed sheet. The sheet was stained with blood, but not just a bloodstain here and there and not one thick and round bloodstain resigned to one specific area. No. The sheet was stained with blood from what must be head to toe from the body beneath the sheet.
He wondered if it was Lori who was under there.
The fact that Flannery covered up the body was confirmation of the good captain’s suspicion about Henry. He wants to see my reaction when he pulls off the sheet.
The storm howled outside the room, cold and menacing, and Henry’s blood turned cold in his veins. He raised his eyes to Flannery’s, who raised his eyes to the ceiling. Henry followed his gaze. His body twitched inward when he took in the sight above him.
The ceiling was painted red. Red with blood. And the blood was moving like a snake across the ceiling, slithering with thick crimson droplets that dripped to the floor. So much blood and his eyes darted to the bed sheet and the body beneath.
“Now, how do you think that happened? It’s like the blood is still alive,” said Flannery, staring at Henry with that skeptical stare, so ready for the big reveal Henry was certain the man was excited. As if he’d caught whoever was responsible. Caught him because to Flannery the murdering son of a bitch who painted that ceiling red was standing in front of him. “But wait, there’s more.”
Flannery pulled off the bed sheet like a magician tosses off a curtain to reveal the magic behind it. And Henry’s jaw dropped.
The body was gutted from throat to navel and hollowed out. No blood in the body-it was all on the ceiling-and no organs, just an emptied, wide-open body. Henry immediately turned away, grinding his jaw when he saw on the dresser across the room all the organs that were removed from the body lined up perfectly and neatly across the top. A pentagram stained the mirror above the dresser, written in blood. Henry noticed how one of those blood droplets dripped from the ceiling to the liver sitting center stage.
“We haven’t found the heart,” said Flannery. “Maybe you can help us locate it.”
Henry turned his stare to Flannery. He could give a shit about Flannery’s skepticism. He didn’t do this and that’s all the truth he required. Henry said nothing in response. What could he say, anyway? It’s better to have a lawyer present when he’s questioned by Flannery. As we all know, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law, and we all know how twisting someone’s words can lead to a conviction. He was an FBI agent, after all.
“This your girl?” asked Flannery, and Henry could feel the captain’s eyes burning a hole through him.
Henry had been so preoccupied staring at the hollowed-out body he hadn’t yet looked at the face. The face that had been battered and beaten to a bloodied pulp destroying all recognizable features. The bones were crushed inward as if someone used a rock to bludgeon the corpse. The hair was short, cut just above the ears and stained red with blood, and the eyes were missing. The body style was short too, and husky. Henry knew who it was, but it wasn’t who Flannery thought it was.
He shook his head and said, “No,” through a closing throat.
Flannery lifted a flashlight, clicked it on and shined that light towards Henry’s feet. “Recognize that size six?”
Next to Henry’s feet were footprints. Small, bloodied footprints and yes, Henry recognized the footprint. Ironically, he’d seen the same this afternoon.
“They led into the parking lot when we first arrived. Good luck for whoever they belong to, considering the storm buried them before we could follow where they went.”
Henry looked at Flannery. “No,” he said, moving his head from left to right.
“Lots of noes at the moment.”
“Something like that,” Henry said under his breath. He wasn’t sure why he was lying. Quite obvious to him, the truth would see the light of day, but he had to. That was the only way he could find Lori before Flannery put all the pieces together. And considering the body’s condition, he could always use the excuse that the body was too mangled and battered to recognize who it was.
“Take a moment, detective. Get a breath of fresh air. I’ll speak to you in a minute.”
Henry had no reply. He simply turned around and stepped outside into the snow. His head down, following the trail those size sixes made. There were two additional footprints outside the room courtesy of the room’s overhang, although the snow was falling fast to conceal them. They were pointed in one direction. His eyes roamed to the western woods surrounding the motel. So dark and quiet. Sassafras and oak trees swayed in the wind with their bare branches stretching like veins into the night sky to the heart of the moon above. The woods creaked and moaned as if in mourning and a thick fog drifted across the landscape. A squealing, chattering screech yelped across the woods and sent a shudder through his bones. He scanned across the woods, hoping to see a light or movement in the moonlight that would tell him where Lori had gone. That was her size six.
And the woman lying dead in the room was her mother.
Chapter 2
Lori kept hearing voices.
Or was it the wind howling through the trees in the western woods? When she first started her trek to the woods, the fog drifted between the trees and seemed to call to her, begging her to enter. The moon was prominent in the night sky, as if the overcast sky that had blanketed Sleepy Hollow all day provided a reprieve for the moon to watch over the Hollow. But the moment she stepped into the woods, the first snowflake danced in front of her eyes. The trees creaked, bending to the wind, as if someone wrenched and wrung those tree trunks until all they could do was groan to the moon like the final gasp from the dead releases all of life’s hardships. A chattering echo erupted across the trees, and Lori’s heart jumped in her chest. She refused to allow those sounds to deter her mission.
She paused to take a better look at what lay ahead. Last thing she wanted was to get lost in the woods. Legend has it they were haunted. Haunted by the souls who met their demise in these woods over the centuries. But Lori knew differently, the woods were haunted by their own memory of the dead, as if it sought to raise them from the depth of the subconscious to release them forever, but with no power to do so, they walked through the woods, angry and willing others to join them.
The snow blanketed the scene, and Lori squinted to see as far as possible. Looking for direction, the light in the darkness that would confirm she was on the right path. She tucked her bare hands into the crook of her arms, standing, staring, looking.
Release meeeee! the wind whispered. Reeelleaeaeaeasssssse Meeeeeee!
She felt a hand brush across the nape of her neck, and she spun around to the ghost that rushed through her bones with a snap of its jaw. Her heart tensed, her bones constricted, and her breath caught in her throat. She turned on a dime, watching the apparition disappear into the woods.
Reeelleaeaeaeasssssse Meeeeeee!
The voice faded with the ghost. Her hand went to her chest when her heart jumped, then tensed from the screech from high above. The great horned owl stretched its wings and hissed at Lori. Its eyes firmly held in her direction. Its mouth was gaping, screeching, and hissing before lifting off the branch in the same direction as the ghost.
Lori swallowed the breath that caught in her throat with a gulp, watching the owl disappear into the snow. She took a step forward, then another, and kept moving.
I’m on the right path, she thought.
She was hoping she’d see it soon. The light. The single flame that burned just for her, in the window where no light was allowed. The light she was told would be waiting.
Hallucinations. Mind control. Manipulation. That’s how the demon worked. Made you feel like you lost your mind. An effort to create confusion in the minds of his victims. Confusion for Marc too, the reason why Lori returned to Sleepy Hollow.
She came to reconcile. To understand why he wrote the letter that ended their relationship. She came to find him, because there was still love in her heart for the man she agreed to marry. Tragedy being the catalyst that robbed Lori of her happily ever after. She knew now that if it weren’t for Marc, she’d be dead already. Which is why she was walking through the woods in the middle of a snowstorm in the middle of the night. Too many people have suffered for the love they shared. Even Lori’s mother, although Lori reconciled, she’d gotten what she deserved. The rest were innocent. Their only mistake was bearing witness to the manifestation of a loving heart, recognizing beauty the moment it blossomed.
She had to get to Marc. She knew where he lived. The old house in the middle of the western woods. The house that was more than two hundred years old. Looked like it had been abandoned a century ago, suffering from a state of long-term neglect, much like Marc looked when she saw him earlier. He looked so different, as if someone had claimed a permanent space in his brain and changed the way he looked.
So many changes have occurred over the last six months Lori couldn’t put her finger on when the change began. Was it before or after the accident? Or maybe the change had always been there, waiting to be discovered.
Her hands were freezing, the cold biting at her skin and bones. She could hardly feel her face it was so cold, and the moon cast shadows across the trees that Lori was certain were waiting for her, watching the trek, knowing her presence was required. She took a step up a small incline and low and behold, the light was there. So faint and subtle. The candle burning in the window. Burning in the window of Marc’s dilapidated house but so far off in the distance, her heart tensed in her chest. Other than the candle, the house was dark, foreboding, cast in a dark moonlight where the snow seemed to disappear. It seemed to call to her, as if she was a requirement the house had yet to claim, wanting to devour every fiber of her being.
Good thing for Lori, the incline leveled out and she could trek through the woods on safer ground.
Reeelleaeaeaeasssssse Meeeeeee!
The apparition stood between the trees, watching her. Angry. Determined. Haunted.
“I am,” she hollered with a whine behind her voice.
She pulled the wool beanie over her ears and moved forward through the trees. All the while keeping her eyes on the light. Everything led up to this moment, and she needed to confront Marc. Confront Marc and his demon.
Because what would you do if someone sold their soul to save your life? Would you give them yours in return?
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