Headless Horseman

Dull yellow light from moth-covered fixtures poured across the barren playground at McSorely Elementary School.  Stars blinked in the night sky and a sliver moon peered eerily from behind wisps of moving clouds.  A dreary autumn breeze chilled metal slides and occasional gusts caused the giant swing set on the lower level to squeak with dry shrills; its foggy shadow casting a skeleton tail across the darkened grass.  Through the breeze a shout was heard, breaking the October evening.  “The Headless Horseman rides again!”

My cousin John was in full gallop, myself astride his back.  We raced past the others and the jungle gym on our way back to the cars.  After a chilly night of games we were heading home.  As had been the strategy all evening, whenever we needed to get somewhere quickly I, who am dreadfully slow, would hop on my much larger and fleet-footed cousin’s back and away we would go.  Being a kid, I equated this to riding a horse, and, it being October, we both equated riding a horse to the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  Thus, every time John would let me hitch a ride that evening, one or both of us would yell “the Headless Horseman rides again!”

With surging speed John sprinted ahead, the misty autumn air being displaced by our ghostly figure.  Through the dark night we ran in what I am sure would have been a terrifying sight even to Mr. Crane himself.

Caught up in the moment I spurred on my mount with a stiff kick of my heels, pulling myself up as I did so to raise a fist and shout once again “the legend has returned! The Headless Horseman rides . . .” but that was as far as I got.  My poorly timed kick to John’s thigh sent him into a slow descent, his natural lope being thwarted by my interference. 

With his upper body parallel to the ground and his legs still churning behind us, we initiated the longest fall in human history.  For three hours we stumbled, tripped, and staggered; all the while with John’s face hovering about two inches from the ground.  To this day he swears that his nose was brushing against the grass as we fell, and I believe him.  I believe him because I spent the duration of the lengthy tumble pulling as hard as I could on the poor guy’s neck in a vain effort to stand him up.  Perched on his back with my feet skipping across the grass, I fought gravity for what seemed like eternity.  I was no longer the fabled decapitated equestrian; I was an Alaskan bush pilot trying his hardest to control a crash landing.  Slowly losing altitude and inching closer and closer to the ground, I braced for impact. 

John’s face was the first thing to hit.  Catching on some dirt, the force of friction on his face upended the rest of his body and sent his still pumping legs into the air.  I was shot forward off of John’s back as if from a catapult, flying fifteen feet through the air with a sustained squeal before landing and rolling up into a tangled ball of laughter and limbs.  John slid face first for a bit before he too came to a sprawling and giggling stop.  Still twisted amongst myself with my arms somehow knotted together around my right knee, which knee was touching my forehead, I laid on my back and peered through the spaces between extremities to check on John.  He scraped his face off the ground and struggled to find my crumpled mass of a body in the dark.  Making eye contact through knitted appendages and strewn dirt, we both erupted in adrenaline-infused laughter. In the same October night the Headless Horseman has never looked so cool or so foolish. 

To read John's account of this story click here.