The fog comes every night in it's legendary way. Even in a latitude accustomed to fog, in Sleepy Hollow the fog is famous for it's density and quiet oppression. When the mist approaches, it steals through the woods; sneaking, slipping and flowing around obstacles in it's utterly silent way. As it advances in it's slow nightly campaign, the fog silences all that it touches so that the small sounds of the night are quieted one by one until the forest is totally silent. Any light it encounters shines bravely for a moment before it is snuffed, hidden behind the advancing curtain.

Few care to venture where the fog may touch them in Sleepy Hollow. I have certainly fled from it's clammy touch many times before. It is easy to evade, although you must ware a flanking attack from the right or left. Once caught though, it is very difficult to escape the feeling of dread, peril and hopelessness that comes over the poor victim. Night seems to last forever, or perhaps it is the hopelessness that the morning will never arrive. Either way, having felt it once when I was too slow, I have vowed to never fall victim to that despair again. You see, with the fog comes the spirits.

Having been the site of many bloody battles over the centuries, Sleepy Hollow is home to many apparitions and shades. Some say they have seen a German or Dutch doctor, having died there himself under mysterious circumstances. Others speak of an Indian Chief who wielded his unnatural power in the valley centuries before the arrival of the Europeans. I am certain the valley is haunted, but not because either of those apparitions have appeared to me. No, I have witnessed the most horrible spectacle of all. I have seen the Headless Horseman, and those who think him a legend are doomed as unbelievers. His spirit is real, his need is great, and his passion is horrible.

What I shall now share with you, at the sunset of my life, is the truth about the Headless Horseman. You see, he is not the evil figure portrayed in the famous novel, constantly on the search for a replacement head. No, so much more severe is his pain and great his loss than a mere novel can ever share.

My name is Mary, and I have known the phantom for these last forty years. I was merely nineteen years old the night the fog caught me, and I felt the clammy cold creep around my bare ankles. I had been fishing in the shallows all day during a particularly fine Indian summer. My shoes were soaked, and I was wandering barefoot and naked to mid-thigh homeward toward grandmother's house. The fog began to creep around the exposed roots of the old elm tree near the Old Mound. Being young, I didn't yet know that I should flee the creeping mist, so I marveled at the sensation as it swirled and gathered around my ankles.

The fog gathered so slowly and my youthful euphoria was such that I did not sense the gathering dread until it was much too late. I first sensed the coming apparition by a sudden purposefulness in the swirl of the mist. I can't tell you if the fog suddenly parted to allow his passage, or if he formed from the very vapor itself. Whatever the method of his coming, it was inexorable, silent and majestic. I was paralyzed by my fear of the headless apparition on horseback, and totally enraptured by it’s approach. Forgive an old lady her indulgence, but in my mind I am still completely consumed by the memory of his first coming. It was as a bride might await her groom on the prima nocta.

Wonderful though the experience was, I felt nothing but despair in the approaching fog until I looked at the place where the rider’s head must be. As the apparition dismounted his horse I suddenly found myself staring at that emptiness between the collars of his riding cloak and only then sensed a relief from the hopelessness all around. It was as if this specter offered within him the only hope of life to be found in those woods that night. Unsure of it’s gender because of the utter lack of facial features I immediately assumed that the apparition was male by judging the manner of dress and the bulge apparent in its trousers.

Being nineteen and recently declared ready to marry I had become fascinated by the bulge in all males’ trousers. It was only by habit that I glanced downward at the package carried by the rider in his nether regions. Only then did I notice the obvious blood stain present on his trousers- and my fear redoubled.

Once dismounted, the horse stood quietly; ignoring the plentiful fodder at it’s feet. The stallion’s eyes were as black holes gathering all the light into themselves and reflecting no glimmer from within. The horsetail did not swish, and the head did not bow or follow it’s masters slow walking progress toward me. I was somehow certain that this was not some trickster in costume. The rider’s clothing appeared antique, but remarkably preserved, so I immediately presumed that I was in the presence of the fabled Headless Horseman. There was certainly no doubting that I was in the presence of at least two ghostly spirits: the man and his horse. A new fear gripped me at this knowledge but I knew not why, nor how to escape my imagined doom.

Stopping before me, the phantom reached to gently brush my cheek with the back of his hand. I felt the hardness of a ring on his finger and the smoothness of his skin at the moment of his touch. I felt a moment of icy cold as a winter grave might be before a sudden rush of warmth flushed the skin of my cheek. I suddenly knew what the horseman required, and did not posses the power to resist him as he bore me to the ground with his will and the gentle touch of his hand on my face.

It was merely a moment before my skirt had been hoisted out of the way and my underpants had been dragged to my knees. I can’t say that I was willing to allow the horseman his way but the forest floor suddenly seemed a very comfortable place to be. I allowed my knees to drop apart revealing my innermost virgin secrets and awaiting my lover’s pleasure.

The fog formed a high obscuring wall around us as the Horseman shed his cloak and drew down his trousers to reveal his pale manhood. My shock at the sight was extreme; for there, between the horseman’s pale thighs and crowned by a semi-mature patch of pale blond pubic hair, the horseman’s erection was as headless as the space between his shoulders. Situated there instead was a pear, a fruit appearing very freshly picked for the occasion.

My shock at the appearance of his cock must have been evident, for the horseman paused a moment before kneeling between my spread legs. I sensed that he was apologetic for what he was about to do, but once begun he did not pause again: His need was to great.

Do not imagine that the following moment was enjoyable. The stem had broken from the fruit so I was spared that sensation, but the narrow neck of the pear passed into my vagina all too quickly leaving only the fat bulb of the fruit to open my virginity to his thrusting member. The initial pain of penetration by a fresh pear was immense, but my passion was filled by the very size of his borrowed tool. My pussy clasped every surface of his manhood feeling the rounded contour of his fruit before tightly gripping the manly shaft that was the horseman’s own ghostly flesh.

The circumstances of my deflowering might be considered to be rape by some, but I don’t remember it in that way. I felt that this moment was a consummation.

One might expect sex with a ghost to be chilly, if not downright terrifying but there was nothing cold about that experience. As the Horseman labored above me, I failed to notice even the slight matter of his missing head. The shaft pounding my clit was warming my nether regions nearly to a boil, and my body was completely supported by the soft ferns beneath me.

The Horseman tensed his entire body at his deepest penetration and I somehow felt his rushing sperm enter my body. I do not know how he managed to impregnate me since he had neither glans, nor working testicles, nor urethra, but the sensation was no odder than the act of intercourse with a ghost. Regardless of how it worked, I felt the rushing flood of his warm fluid as it filled my womb, and another rushing flood as the answers to my questions simultaneously flooded my mind.

I was transported to another time and another place. I knew who I was, but I was nothing more than a spirit myself; a spectator watching another’s life unfold before me. Candlelight and a sputtering oil lamp above a mantle containing a dimly burning fire lit the scene. The Horseman (I knew him somehow) was locked in an embrace with another young girl who looked remarkably like my sister, or even my twin. The horseman was about nineteen and was striking in his appearance. Chiseled aristocratic Germanic features below a shock of thick blond hair were beautiful and terrifying at the same time. His smooth body was well developed and obviously that of a man used to physical activity, but judging from his scant pubic hair, his privates were obviously newly mature. From his fumbling, I would guess that his cock had been rarely, if ever, used for it’s God given use. Finally, after the horseman’s awkward false-starts, the couple was nude and I admired the curve of the Horseman’s dimly lit musculature as they embraced. These two were passionate about their embrace and I immediately somehow understood that I was witnessing a newly married couple’s first night.

I was embarrassed by the situation, and wanted to leave these two to their consummation, but I felt compelled to watch the story unfold. The maiden spread her legs to allow her husband his entry as he positioned himself above his wife. Her eyes never left his cock as it throbbed gently above her flat belly, and her hands never released his scrotum as she gently pulled him to her. His erection brushed through her pubic hair and the large glans unhooded itself just prior to the moment of certain penetration. The woman tipped her head back in anticipation of her deflowering as the man tensed his smooth buttocks preparing himself to thrust his manhood wholly into his wife.

Suddenly, the room was filled with dozens of local militia surrounding the couple on the low bed. The man was snatched away from his wife only as he began the single thrust to take his wife’s virginity. Screaming, the woman was bundled into a cloak and dragged from her marital bed and out of the room. I stayed to see the fate of the Horseman as he was ordered to dress and was then dragged from the room into the gently snowing night. Somehow I followed the group of men as they sometimes dragged and sometimes pushed the Horseman toward the church on the knoll. The lie of the road was only slightly different from the way it was situated in my own time so I was easily able to keep up with the crowd as it pushed it’s way through the churchyard gates.

The Hessian, as I could tell from his uniform, was pushed to his knees near one of the gravestones in the churchyard. His cloak was stripped roughly from his shoulders, leaving him naked except for his trousers that were barely clasped around his narrow hips.

The crowd was obviously intoxicated, and was clearly lusting for the boy’s blood as they loudly demanded his death. A man, I presumed the girl’s father, began to scream at the Horseman shivering in the falling snow. The father demanded to know why the boy had dared to defile his daughter and, not waiting for an answer, informed the horseman that his crimes were too great for explanation and demanded his death.

The crowd was only too happy to oblige the father and surged inward upon the hapless horseman. In moments they had sprawled him headfirst over one of the gravestones to await the fatal blow to the back of his neck. But this fate was evidently inadequate to a different young man in the crowd, as he suddenly demanded that the crowd exact ‘some punishment’ for the Horseman’s attempt to steal the young woman’s virtue.

I thought that the young man might be the girl’s brother, or perhaps the father’s intended for his daughter. It was no matter, the crowd stood the horseman up, as the young man took a sword from one of the Militia and demanded that someone hold the ‘bastard Hessian’s’ cock against a stone for it ‘wanted chopping’.

The Hessian’s composure, so sure until now, finally shattered as he realized that the boy with the sword intended to emasculate him. Two men stripped the young groom naked and restrained the Horseman by tightly holding his forearms. Another in the crowd quickly looped a leather tie around the tip of the Horseman’s cock, just behind the crown of the glans, and held it stretched tightly there on top of a nearby gravestone. The loud young man stood beside the stone with the sword in his hand awaiting the moment to strike. My Horseman’s cock was quite beautiful there, warmly pink and pressed into the virgin white snow as it awaited the kiss of the blade.

The chop was not long in coming. A swish, and a glint of torchlight on the steel, was all the warning there was before a loud clang of steel on stone signaled the decapitation of my Horseman’s cock. A moment later, as the clang was quickly absorbed by the fallen snow, my Horseman’s scream filled the woods but was quickly drowned out by the cheers of the gathered crowd. The horrible wound spurted my Horseman’s noble red blood onto the white snow where it stained everything a spreading shade of black in the dim light. The sword lay broken at the foot of the gravestone and the stone itself had been notched by the power of the strike.

The two men holding my Horseman barely on his feet quickly bent him again over the same gravestone to await the fatal blow that would end his suffering. Laying face-down across the stone my Horseman was forced to stare through his tears at his amputated penis for a few moments until another Militia sword clumsily severed his head from his shoulders.

The crowd, it’s bloodlust satisfied, quickly departed the churchyard. A few remained behind, respecting the Hessian’s right to a burial, and dug a quick grave in the nearly frozen ground. Finished, they tugged his trousers over the Horseman’s legs and rolled him in his cloak into the dark earth to await the inevitable.

In their haste, or their drunkenness, they had dug the hole on a Northerly axis. When they tumbled the body into it’s resting place, they failed to reunite the parts of my Horseman’s earthly body, and the corpse came to rest face-down in a most undignified manner. I became sure, as I watched these proceedings, that this disrespect did as much to bring the Horseman’s wrath from the grave as any of the other indignities visited on the newly married couple on their wedding night.

I felt a tugging in my lower body as I returned to the present. The Horseman, gently now, withdrew his manhood from my nether regions. As he returned to a flaccid state, the pear dragged his cock obscenely below his balls before he tucked his fruits and nuts into his trousers. A moment more and the Horseman again mounted his stallion.

My Horseman reached behind him to his saddlebag and withdrew a brilliant orange carved pumpkin. Terrible eyes, a mouth and gaping nose were carved upon the face of the gourd. Reaching up, he affixed it firmly between his shoulder blades before looking again at me with those carved eyes. My some mercy I did not see the ugly fruit for what it was, but somehow superimposed the beautiful features I had dreamed earlier as I nodded my farewell. I sensed his gratitude, his Love, and his promise before he pulled the stallion’s head toward the churchyard and disappeared into the mist as quietly as he had appeared.

Since that night I have been with the horseman three more times. I have never sought him out, but he seems to find me when I most need him. Each moment is as the ones before, but I have slowly gained a greater understanding of my Horseman’s life, and death. I still bear an elliptical mark on my cheek from the touch of the Horseman’s ring so marking me as his. I will probably bear that mark until my dying day when the brand on my heart will become apparent to all who care to see it.

I have been to the churchyard thousands of times during my life. That year, my nineteenth winter, I looked at the churchyard in a different way. I explored the yard carefully since there had been many changes in those two hundred years, and I found what I was looking for. There is a gravestone near the north gate that bears a deep weathered notch into the top of the granite. It is not difficult at all to imagine my Horseman’s penis waiting there, or the amputated head landing just below it in the snow.

I have also found his grave, and have made sure that I will be buried there as well when my days are ended. My Horseman and my Husband await me there.