by Irvine, Alex
Terribilis Deus de sanctuario suo.
Deus Israhel ipse truderit virtutem et fortitudinem plebi Suae.
Benedictus Deus. Gloria Patri.
—An exorcism
While we pass the time, I write in this journal and Abigail unburdens herself. She left the archive earlier to speak with a former paramour, the officer Luke, whose hostility toward me is now understandable, if still misplaced. Reaching for the only example I had, I told Abigail that despite the course of events I would change nothing about my love for Katrina. Her mystery and allure came at the cost of secrecy; I understand this now, and would have it no other way. This appeared to change Abigail’s mind about something. She has left again to speak to Luke.
Consideration of matters of the heart always returns me to thoughts of Katrina. We stole a few days together once, shortly after our marriage, when it was clear that the tides of the war to come would draw us apart more often than permit us any time together. The locale was a cabin on the banks of the Potomac, let to us by General Washington as a wedding gift. We had wed without benefit of family presence, either mine or hers—mine due to my father’s vehement opposition to the union, and hers due to an estrangement from her relations whose origin and nature she was reluctant to discuss. Looking back with the aid of what I now know of her membership in the Radiant Heart, I can only suspect that the familial discord stemmed from her family’s disapproval—yet I do not know that for sure.
I recall the rhododendrons in full flower on the grounds, and have had a fondness for that plant ever since. Those were the finest days of my life. There was nothing in the world save we two, in the first full bloom of love. I looked upon Katrina with wonder, scarcely able to believe she had assented to my proposal. One always wonders, I suppose, whether the meeting of minds and hearts in marriage will be as beautiful in the event as it has been in the imagination beforehand—and for us it surely was. We took such joy in each other’s company that when we took our leave from the cabin and plunged back into the cause of the colonies’ independence, we were both incalculably stronger for the knowledge that neither of us would ever face troubled times alone. Remembering those days was a source of strength to me during the most difficult and dangerous moments of the war. I fought not just for the independence of the infant United States of America, but for a return to my beloved Katrina and for the peace that would permit us to build our lives together as we both wished.
I wonder what has become of the letters I wrote her, and she wrote to me. Mine are doubtless gone to rot on the battlefield along the banks of the creek running into the Hudson, where the Horseman and I struck each other down. Perhaps she saved them? I cannot imagine how, so pressing were her circumstances. Should I ever encounter those letters again, I will consider it a great gift from the Infinite.
What pleasure this memory brings, for it is she I fight for—and when she is free, we will continue the fight by each other’s sides. She was a witch? Very well, she was a witch. Perhaps she even enchanted me into falling in love with her with the flowers that always seemed to be in her hair. Again, very well; for my love has long since overpowered whatever charm she might have mustered. It is mine, and hers, and its magic is only the magic of two hearts meeting and becoming one.
Also: In honor of our nuptials, a mystery poet—though I have my suspicions about the source—sent a few more bawdy lines of verse:
Ichabod Crane is to ride
On an errand with Mohawks for guides
Pursuing the Hessian
He must not stop to freshen
His mood with Katrina his bride.
Now, remembering that little bit of poesy, I cannot help but wonder if it was my friend John Adams having one more sly joke than I had previously understood. I fought many Hessians during the war, but he would have known the degree of their complicity in the occult maneuverings to which I was as yet a stranger. Whoever the sender, I cannot but toast the sharp tooth of your wit.
That damned limerick has guided my thoughts along prurient lines. Since I am the only one who will read this—unless I am dead, in which case it will no longer matter—I confess in these pages that I have encountered the, shall we say, less salutary precincts of the Internet. I will not commit details to paper; however, I will say I long for Katrina yet more intensely after this inadvertent journey through the fleshly cornucopia of these sites. Our union was ever a healthy one. (I am put reluctantly in mind of yet another pompous aphorism from the pen of Franklin, who once wrote, “Rarely use venery but for health or offspring”—yet I do not think I reveal any harmful secrets when I say that he was a devotee of the physical pleasures to a degree exceeding that necessary for health.) Katrina and I would have had children one day; we certainly had adequate practice to ensure the process would go smoothly.
The Horseman is trapped! Using a cell deep in the tunnels where the Freemasons created a supernatural barrier long ago, and a large number of electric lamps whose light shines on the same wavelengths as the invisible portion of the sun’s rays—ultraviolet is the term Abigail used—we drew the Horseman from the clock tower into the tunnels, guiding him into our trap with a trail of skulls. Compelled to touch each skull to discern whether it was his, the Horseman walked straight into our snare.
Now the question is: How long can we hold him? For surely his supernatural allies will rally to his rescue.
[October 29]
The enemy has begun his counteroffensive, striking deep at the most crucial element of any soldier’s arsenal: belief in the rightness of his cause.
We had the Horseman, and we required a means to communicate with him, for a prisoner is of little use when he cannot be interrogated. The first possibility that suggested itself to me was Brooks, who had demonstrated some sympathy for Abigail and me the night before—and who had demonstrated the ability to communicate with the Horseman by means of necromancy.
Brooks had last been seen in the tunnels, so it was there we sought him again. It took little time to locate his hiding place, where he had brought a box of ephemera from his mortal life: photographs, papers, mementos. The area was also quite liberally festooned with necromantic images, leading me to believe that Brooks was the ideal method by which we might communicate not just with the Hessian, but with Moloch himself. Many of the symbols I observed, inscribed by Brooks’s own hand, were ancient in origin and hearkened back to the Egyptians, who first advanced the practice of communing with the dead beyond its shamanistic origins.
When confronted, Brooks made no secret of his powers. He was quite unwilling to let himself be used as a conduit for communication with the Horseman, but I stood firm despite Abigail’s misgivings.
As events were shortly to teach me, this was a headstrong stance and one I should have reconsidered. I goaded the Horseman into using Brooks to speak, thinking I could pry from him the secrets of his origin and power. Instead, I received a sharp and painful lesson in the unintended consequences of decisions made in the heat of emotion.
For the Horseman is no Hessian at all, but the walking corpse of Abraham Van Brunt. My friend, my rival in love, and now my immortal enemy. It was he to whom Katrina was initially betrothed, he whom she left to become my wife in 1775—and he whom I was forced to abandon to the redcoats. Forced, I say, because even knowing what I now know, I am still unable to discern what I might have done differently.
Despite our friendship, I was not blind to Van Brunt’s flaws. He was a stalwart ally, a brave soldier, and also a vain and arrogant man who had captured Katrina through an arrangement between their families. He was devoted to her in his way, however, and I accompanied him to a jeweler’s once to help him purchase a necklace in celebration of their engagement. True to his nature, he settled on the most ornate piece the jeweler had on offer, but I dissuaded him, suggesting that a simpler piece was more in keeping with Katrina’s character. He bestowed it upon her later, at a gathering of influential colonists sympathetic to the cause of liberty—though it was a social occasion a
nd politics were discussed with great discretion, since the guest list included loyalists as well. Katrina caught my eye when Abraham gave her the necklace, and as if we both had the gift of mind reading I could see her certainty that I had in fact selected the gift.
Later she came to me and said she intended to break off her engagement to Abraham. After she did so—with, I insist, no encouragement on my part—he naturally was humiliated, and genuinely heartbroken as well; it would have suited both of us if we had never again had cause to interact. Events are rarely so amenable to the wishes of their participants, however, and we were charged with a vital mission: to deliver the Declaration and Resolves to the First Continental Congress, then about to convene in Philadelphia. This document was the ancestor of the more justly renowned Declaration of Independence, which in turn could not have existed had not the leaders of the colonies had an earlier document to use as a sounding board. It clarified their goals and beliefs while also forging a consensus on articles whose proposal was met with resistance.
As Abraham and I rode, my guilty conscience overmastered my powers of tact, and I confessed to him the love Katrina and I shared. This was the right action, perhaps, but taken at the wrong time—he grew enraged and drew his sword. I fought him, pleading the while that he put up his sword and listen to reason—but before his temper could cool he was struck by a bullet and fell. The redcoats approached and I was faced with a terrible decision. I had not the time to minister to him, and ’twas unthinkable to let the Declaration of Resolves fall into British hands before it could be announced under the imprimatur of the Continental Congress. Duty to country—for so we already believed the colonies to be, de facto if not de jure—outweighed duty to friend. I fled, evading the redcoats, and fulfilled my mission, though I left Abraham to die.
I spoke of this to Abigail, as she learned that the Hessians in the present day had broken into an antiquities merchant and stolen an object known as the Thracian Phiale. This item was a powerful focus of magic, and in conjunction with certain incantations could be used to break the enchantment holding the Horseman shackled in the cell Jefferson built.
The mind reels at times, considering the number and variance of magical traditions being brought to bear in this war. Egyptian and Greek, European and Native American—and Druidic, as I was soon to learn from Jennifer. It was she who gave us to understand that the Thracian Phiale was not Greek at all, but a creation of Druidic sects who receded into hiding after the Christianization of Britain. They passed their traditions through secret writings, some of which Miss Jenny had come across while hunting for artifacts. The Phiale would disrupt the Horseman’s imprisonment if we did not take immediate measures to prevent its use, she warned—but again I was too headstrong to listen. I would not wait for help, because we had already opened the interrogation, with Brooks as intermediary, and the Horseman had already produced the very necklace I selected for Katrina two hundred years and more before this day. I demanded the truth from him as our enemies approached from all sides—and from within.
DRUIDS. Sorcerous sect of pre-Roman Celtic origin. Suppressed by Romans, later by Christianization. Latin druides or druidae, contemporary with Greek δρυΐδης—both traceable to older Irish and Welsh drui/dryw, “seer” or “sorcerer.” Almost nothing is known reliably of their practices, though they are an eternally fecund source of myth and facile nature worship. Likely connected to the oak tree, which due to its longevity and strength was held to be a repository of wisdom.
The Hessians had appealed to Moloch for assistance, and they received it. Hessian fighters cut off the electricity to the building, turning off the ultraviolet lamps. At the same time, a demonic beast, the likes of which I have never seen and pray never to see again, tore through the police guard and forced its way through the tunnels, where the Horseman was freeing himself of the shackles now that the ultraviolet lamps no longer sapped his strength. Brooks, taking advantage of our distraction, disgorged the Thracian Phiale from his body, and we understood too late that his show of sympathy to our cause was merely a ruse; it had taken us in completely. We were now soon to confront the Horseman restored to his powers.
Sensing his advantage, the Horseman spoke through Brooks again, taunting me, telling me that he had traded his soul to achieve his fondest wish: Katrina. In a flash I understood: Moloch held Katrina captive because the promise of her holds the Horseman in his sway.
The only reason I survived to write this is a final intervention from Brooks—who, as the Horseman raised his weapon to strike me down and achieve the goal for which he had suffered so long, stayed his hand. Hessian acolytes spirited the Horseman away, and Brooks as well, using the darkness as cover while I strengthened.
The inference is clear and unmistakable: Moloch does not wish me dead. Now that our blood has been separated by the Sin Eater Henry Parish, Van Brunt could have killed me tonight but did not. As long as Moloch holds Katrina, Van Brunt will do his bidding. What do we do with this knowledge? How am I to cope with knowing that my wife is a demon’s prize? And how to turn that knowledge into action—and into victory?
[October 31]
The key is to know why Moloch wishes to preserve my life. With that information we may begin to concoct a plan to turn Moloch’s own goals against him—and use the Horseman as the linchpin of that turning.
I slept little last night. The thought of Katrina in her forest Purgatory, subject to the demonic whim of Moloch himself—what man could sleep?
Also the question of betrayal prevented my eyes from closing and my mind from taking rest. An ugly word, betrayal. From the Latin tradere, “to hand over.” Did I hand Abraham Van Brunt over to our mutual enemies?
Unquestionably I did. But could I have done otherwise? Had I stayed to fight, and both of us been killed, British discovery of the Declaration and Resolves would have endangered a number of the delegates to the Continental Congress. Apart from the loss of life, surely it would have delayed the independence of the colonies from Britain, perhaps for decades.
Against that knowledge, I weigh the memory of leaving Van Brunt behind … and though just yesterday I wrote of the necessity of choosing reason over emotion, in this case I find myself unable to make that choice. For without the staying hand of emotion, reason turns the human mind into a calculating machine—one more node, perhaps, in the Internet. There is no worse fate for a mind that believes itself capable of independent thought, or a heart that yearns for the love of fellow creatures, including my Masonic brethren who have been murdered by the Hessian.
I have not written of it these past few days because my instinct would have been to indulge in self-pity—that weakest and most despicable of vices! They are gone. They would have killed me, but they were true brothers, and perhaps the nearest thing I might have had to true friends (Abigail apart). Our side in this war is inestimably weakened by their loss. I would reach out to other Freemasons in and around Sleepy Hollow, but not all of the brethren are initiated into the deeper mysteries; not all possess the darkest secrets; that is as it should be, yet it makes any contact difficult. I must wait until events demand such a desperate embassy—or until others within Freemasonry reach out to me. You are out there, my brothers; I know it. But where? Make yourselves known, I beg of you.
I am probably not, as they say, in the spirit of this holiday called Halloween. When I saw a small child dressed as a witch—or as the Headless Horseman, of whom I counted four today, none more than ten years of age—I immediately ran to Abigail and warned her that the Order of the Blood Moon was openly asserting its diabolical powers and drawing innocent children into their coven. How she laughed!
There was a Hallowmas celebration in the England of my youth, but it consisted primarily of groups of drunken young men singing rowdy songs and demanding gifts from their more sedate neighbors in return for the promise of prayers for the dead. How it became the province of children I know not, although it seems unsurprising that a celebration involving costumes and sweets would dr
aw children in. Samhain, the ancient Celtic holiday, lies behind it all—that time when the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead was thinnest and most permeable. In America it has all been buried under a tide of festival good cheer. I suspect the spirits, accustomed as they were to a certain amount of deference, are quite irritated by this development.
A few thoughts that remain on my mind:
• Miss Jenny is proving herself an invaluable asset. She has knowledge of the secret undercurrents of Sleepy Hollow, thanks to her work on behalf of Sheriff Corbin—and she also has a soldier’s nature. By that I mean that she is the type of person (I almost wrote man) who constantly feels the lack of battle whenever there is no battle to fight. She throws herself into combat with both gusto and intelligence. We will need her in the future, perhaps more than we have already needed her thus far.
• I have been doing a bit of reading in the imaginative literature of this country. Fascinating—I find Twain a splendid raconteur. Also I happened to pick up a volume by William Faulkner. His language is by turns intoxicating and opaque, but one senses every word was carefully placed. I must read more of him before I decide whether he is a literary experimentalist or a purveyor of glib nonsense masquerading as emotional profundity.
• In addition to his dalliance with slaves (which I reflexively denied when Abigail first mentioned it, but now I have come to understand that it is established fact), Jefferson possessed an inordinate fondness for puns—not a transgression on the order of adultery, certainly, but another facet of him that he angled away from public view. The Founding Fathers (this is a source of constant surprise for those who did not know them as men) were like anyone else, with a full human array of foibles and peccadilloes.