Sleepy Hollow - S1E3 - For the Triumph of Evil

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Previously on Sleepy Hollow, ‘Blood Moon’

Sleepy Hollow – S1E3 – For The Triumph of Evil… (Alternate Title: This Sandman is a Snooze…)

 

New characters of note:

• The Sandman – scary faceless nightmare monster
• Dr. Vega – Jenny Mills’ first psychiatric doctor
• Mr. Gillespie – an upstate New York rancher
• Wendel Clark – owner of Geronimotors, the Mohawk car lot

 

Abbie walks into the station with her serious face on. Captain Irving already has The Suspect in custody, and Crane (the only non-officer in the joint) has started the interrogation without them. From behind the police-issue one way mirror, Irving, Abbie, and the smug forensic psychologist watch as Crane grills The Suspect. It’s teenage trouble-maker Abbie Mills! That’s weird…that means this must be…A DREAM! I certainly hope it’s a dream, because Ichabod just told Abbie that truth would set her free, his eyes are a solid milky white, the door just slammed, she’s locked in the interrogation room with a strobe light, and a mouth-less monster with sand pouring from eyes just got all up in her face.

She awakes with a start—or rather, with a phone call. So it WAS a dream! An emergency call with her name on it gets her out of bed to find a Dr. Maura Vega on the ledge of a building asking to speak to Mills. Vega won’t turn from the spectacular ledge-side view, but tells Abbie that everything Jenny told her was the truth and that she lied about it to everyone. She turns her head and she has the same cataract eyes from the dream! In fact, it IS the woman from the dream—the smug forensic psychologist that she’s never actually met. She’s had it coming for a long time (we all have, she says cryptically), and then falls off of the ledge onto a cop car below.

When Abbie explains the solid white eyes to Crane and Irving, Crane checks out Corpse Vega’s eyes, which are indeed white, and then they pop like a sand-filled zit! They are no longer eyes but have been “transmogrified to orbs filled with sand”—not that you’d know it by talking to Crane or Irving. Both of them seem to take all of this very well in stride, though only one of them is a 250-year transplant being hunted by a Headless Horseman and trying to forestall the Apocalypse. The other one is just a police captain…or is he? Orlando Jones just does not get enough screen time, but I suspect as the series progresses Irving is going to become a far larger character…but whose side will he be on?

Done with his mysterious “supplies-gathering” mission to Albany, Irving instructs Abbie to look into the whole Dr. Vega thing. Turns out Vega was Jenny Mills’ first doctor in the looney bin, so he naturally wants to utilize a cop with some sort of connection to the case—just standard operating procedure. No conflict of interests to see here. Abbie fails to tell Irving of her prophetic dream where Dr. Vega warns her of her own impending doom, or “nightmare” as she calls it, because that would be a weird thing to tell your boss, but Crane thinks her dream is a sign that she really is one of the two Witnesses. I thought we’d already agreed on that point an episode or two ago, but that’s fine—Abbie needs some more convincing.

Abbie and Crane rewatch the footage of Jenny and Dr. Vega in one of their doctor/patient confidential sessions from years ago. Ichabod sure has gotten a grasp of this 20^th century technology—now he can work an outdated VCR with a remote! Oh wait, no…no he can’t work a VCR, either. Dr. Vega admits in her private notes that Jenny Mills has no other signs of delusion; other being a pretty operative word here, since she’s claiming to see a ram-headed demon in the misty woods. But because Jenny was still held as a crazy, Dr. Vega ultimately feels responsible for her diagnosis. At the urging of Crane, Abbie realizes she must go talk to Jenny.

Snarky Nurse, who clearly doesn’t read patient files, doesn’t even know that Jenny has a sister and yet is not at all surprised that Jenny doesn’t want to see Abbie. Crane offers to talk to Jenny instead and explains that he has also seen the demon and that she isn’t crazy. A time traveling British Revolutionary War soldier who sees a headless man on a horse that says you aren’t crazy isn’t a lot to write home about, regardless of how fantastic his hair is. All Jenny can talk about is how mad she is at Abbie for not getting herself locked up as well; she starts to believe Crane when he tells her Dr. Vega’s last words and she even throws in a few eyebrow raising mysterious phrases, but ultimately can’t do anything except be mad at her sister.

Ichabod Crane—or Icky, as we will call him thanks to Jenny—won’t take a Facebook-abbreviated “It’s Complicated” explanation about the relationship between Mills’ sister, so Abbie goes into flashback-level details. When the Mills sisters passed out after seeing the demon, they were actually out for four days. Good thing that demon left them alone as soon as they blacked out! The entire town was looking for them, but they were found by a Rancher named Mr. Gillespie. Unfortunately for Mr. Gillespie, he spotted the demon as well. Apparently the demon had been lurking for four days, not messing with the two girls he just scared to death. Just lurking, and getting seen by other minor characters. Abbie told Jenny to keep her mouth shut so they could stay in their foster home, but Jenny insisted that there was pale skinny demon and therefore got carted off to the asylum. Icky tries to absolve Abbie of her sister-abandoning guilt and fear of the truth, but she wants nothing to do with it.

Off in Rancher Gillespie’s woodshop, work makes him sleepy until he hears all this unexplained banging and decides to investigate as if horror movies don’t come to Sleepy Hollow. While he stumbles around his shop, The Sandman sneaks around and ends up standing right behind him! Gillespie fires off a shot, but The Sandman has already disappeared.

Someone has pranked Captain Irving with a headless Mountie road sign—it’s Luke Morales, loveable ex of Det. Mills! He thinks five people dead is hilarious because he’s a rookie.

Irving gets called to the Gillespie Ranch, where shots have been heard; Crane and Mills run into him there just in time for Abbie to be requested by Gillespie for a conversation. Kevlared-up, she walks through the Gillespie house and finds him holding his wife hostage in the kitchen.

He looks up at Abbie with milky-white eyes and The Sandman pops up behind her! Gillespie shoots, but Abbie keeps her cool—until he tells her that The Sandman is coming for her next, and when she sleeps she’ll die. Then he blows his head off.

Crane gives his best uptight British comfort to Abbie after the incident, and Abbie admits that Jenny is the key to all of this. She tells him what Gillespie’s last words were and then has to explain what The Sandman is, traditionally—the kindly sprite who spreads dreams to the sleeping—allowing Icky to make the connection between the fairy story and the faceless nightmare monster.

Luckily, the late Sheriff Clancy appears to have had a book on faceless nightmare monsters. Luckily, indeed! Abbie reads that there are good and there are vengeful dream spirits and shows him the sign of an ancient Mohawk dream demon, the Ro’kenhrontyes.

Crane fought with the Mohawks in the war and shared their campfires at night, where he heard the story of the Ro’kenhrontyes—essentially a cautionary tale meant for little kids to always do right by their neighbors, lest the monster kill them in their sleep for not helping others. Like the Good Samaritan, but with more blood and vengeance. Icky wants to go see a shaman, but since there aren’t a lot of Indians left in Sleepy Hollow (much to his outrage, and also complete surprise), they do the best they can.

And that’s how they end up at Geronimotors. The proprietor, Wendel Clark, refuses to help when they ask about the Ro’kenhrontyes until he remembers that that is exactly the kind of behavior the Ro’ken feeds on. Oh, Mohawk irony!

Wendel Clark takes them on a hell of a commute out to his animal hide-stuffed cabin. He gives Crane and Mills a better idea of how the Ro’ken operates; basically, it waits until you really dick people over, then tortures you with it until you take your own life and he owns your soul. Abbie must fight the demon on it’s own turf—dreamworld—in order to redeem herself and save her own life. Clark feeds them the blue kool-aid (they call it tea, but let’s be honest) to fall asleep, then ties them down and stings them with scorpions to control their actions…wait, scorpions? Are scorpions even native to New York?

Crane and Abbie end up in Sleepy Hollow’s patented misty wood, now dreamworld, but are completely separated. The Sandman creeps up behind Abbie and then very slowly flings sand into her eyes. I guess with 9 minutes left in the episode, she didn’t have time to duck, and her real-time body jolts awake with sand-filled white eyes. Sandman has weighed Abbie’s soul on the scale and finds it wanting, then he sand-storm whisks her away to the opening scene interogation of teenaged Abbie and Jenny.

Back in the woods, Icky opens a random lone door that he finds and ends up in the police station—the dream police station. The Sandman’s victims are hanging from a ceiling, and one noose remains open.

Sandman is making adult Abbie watch teenage Abbie lie when IC bursts in. The demon cannot be dissuaded, though, because Icky’s sins are not for The Sandman to judge…even though that’s what he does for a living. That won’t keep him from torturing our hero, though, and ripping his arms off and turning them to sand. But Abbie saves the day by finally admitting the truth about her childhood lies; as she speaks about the demon she saw, Sandman turns to glass and Abbie shatters him with a chair. Poor form, Sandman-Mohawk irony strikes again! Torturing Abbie and forcing her to admit the truth was The Sandman’s ultimate and literal destruction.

Icky and Abbie are back at the batcave resting when Captain Irving walks in, only a touch suspicious that they’re in there at all with all those secret files. He also is remarkably blasé about their evening; as long as everything is kosher for the next 6 days, it’s all he needs to know. That’s an odd reaction, considering the recent supernatural events of the town. Strange things are afoot…

Abbie thanks Crane for his help then leaves to visit her sister; without Snarky Nurse at the desk she gets right in, but Jenny is missing from her room. Abbie searches the room for her and discovers an easily-moved ceiling panel—Jenny has escaped!

Next week on Sleepy Hollow: What’s in the box? (hint: it’s probably not the Headless Horseman. Where is he??)