Headless

By Scott Crowder

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of our most enduring stories, but what if the story hadn't always been the same one with which you grew up? Go back in time and hear about the myth behind the legend, but only if you dare...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Crowder
• Release date: Mar 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476413761

Scott Crowder

I live just outside Raleigh, North Carolina. I've only been professionally published once, in last fall's edition of Flashquake online magazine, but I hope it's the start of something long term. I'm happily married, and I'm the father to two beautiful little girls, ages five and two, who will never be allowed to date boys, drive cars that are transporting boys, nor ride in cars to places where boys are present, or wear non-Amish-spinster-approved clothing in front of boys. I love horror movies, rhythmic noise, peanut butter, and the Munsters, not necessarily in that order. Please feel free to contact me if you want; I'd love to hear what you thought of the book. My e-mail address is zombieapocalypse at earthlink.net. Thanks for reading.

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Headless

By Scott Crowder

Published by r[E]volution Press at Smashwords

Contents copyright © 2012 Scott Crowder / r[E]volution Press

All rights reserved. Any reproduction, sale, or commercial use of this book without express written permission of the author is strictly forbidden.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are inventions of one author or the other. Any resemblance to actual events or people, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover image was found on the internet and I make no claim of ownership to it. If it’s yours and you’d like it removed, please contact me at zombieapocalypse [at] earthlink [dot] net.

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Washington Irving, that icon of early American literature, has for a time now been revered as one of the greatest writers your foundling nation has yet produced. The characters he claims to have created, including the one and only Ichabod Crane, will undoubtedly live long after he has ceased to do so.

And yet I must put it to you truly and in the least venomous vernacular available to me: Mr. Irving was a thief, a common brigand who stole no less than my entire life from me.

History tells us that in 1809, Washington Irving invented the character of a crotchety old Dutch writer named Diedrich Knickerbocker, and that his most famous stories, including Rip van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, actually came from the pen of this fictional Knickerbocker.

Difficult as it is to believe, I am Diedrich Knickerbocker, and while I am a writer and I am Dutch, I am neither fictional nor crotchety. What I am is the man who wrote the story that Irving came to call The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but which I originally titled Headless; or Fell Dullahan.

Irving had been a writer of many years when I met him in the autumn of 1808. He and his brother were becoming well-known even outside their beloved city of Manhattan through the success of their literary magazine Salmagundi, in which they lampooned New York culture and politics. He socialized with a group of literate young men he dubbed The Lads of Kilkenny. I came to him with some examples of my