In this episode, Abbie and Ichabod fight the Pied Piper to save a missing girl. Frank Irving learns about the contract he signed in blood and just how much power the war horseman has over him and his family.
Daniel Lancaster and the Pied Piper
The legend in this episode is about Daniel Lancaster and the Pied Piper. In 1778, Daniel hired the Pied Piper to lure some Red Coats out and kill them. The Piper is superfast and good with a sword which Ichabod suspects means he sold his soul. Daniel Lancaster then betrayed and killed the Piper. Ever since then, the Piper lures one daughter from each Lancaster generation on her 10th birthday. If the girl is saved and returned to the family, then all children in that generation die.
Missing Girl
A girl goes missing and through their search in the woods, Ichabod and Abbie find a flute made of bone. Ichabod plays it and Abbie starts getting drawn to some unknown place. This is how they figure out that the girl must have been lured by a Pied Piper. Ichabod is catching on with technology. He’s learning how to drive and now he’s proposing ideas involving cell phones. The duo records Ichabod playing the bone flute on the cell phone. Then Ichabod follows Abbie through the woods as she listens to the music through headphones and lets it lure her in. They come across an injured Nick Hawley, Jenny’s friend, who is searching for the flute. He was injured by some guy who is fast with a knife, which was actually the Piper. His business of finding the special type of items is all he cares about so Abbie agrees to let him have the flute for his help. He has a lot of historical knowledge on these type items, but does not believe stories of the Pied Piper are true. He learned the hard way when they find the girl in the Piper’s lair. It still doesn’t give him the change-of-heart Abbie and Ichabod hoped for. He just wants the flute so he can get his money. She breaks it before giving it to him which means they probably can’t call on him for help in the future.
Once Abbie and Ichabod figure out that either one child gets sacrificed or all of them, they go try to defeat the Piper. Ichabod wears some ear plugs Abbie gave him from the police weaponry. They protect him from the effects of the Piper’s staff (which have holes like the bone flute), but he falls and the plugs come out. This puts him in screaming agony and his ears start to bleed. He is able to smash the Piper’s foot with a stone, distracting him long enough for Abbie to thrust a sword into him, defeating him.
Frank Irving
Frank Irving gets a vision when he starts reading about the war horseman in the Bible. It is of a chaotic place with shooting and fighting all around. He has black eyes and is beating on someone. When he comes back to the present, the Bible is burning. When Henry visits him, he confronts him about being the war horseman. Henry threatens to remove any protection or funding his family is getting, including medical care for his handicapped daughter. He also clues Irving in on the fact that he signed the contract in blood and now he owns his soul.
The Buyer
We know Hawley has a lot of historical knowledge and is hunting certain biblical or supernatural items for a buyer. We watch the middle man deliver the broken bone flute to the buyer who turns out to be, I’m sure you’ve already guessed it, Henry Parrish. Henry mashes up the bone into dust and tastes it. I can only suspect that he is tasting the sin which he describes in a single word as “perfect”.
Watch Sleepy Hollow Mondays on Fox; 9pm EST / 8pm CST.