The Secret Journal of Ichabod Crane

by Irvine, Alex

  It occurs to me that a search for Crane might well prove fruitless because my son might have lived his life under another name. Katrina left this world scarcely a year after my own departure, did she not? The boy would have been adopted. What became of my son? Who raised him? Did they know of his true parentage, and if so, did they tell him?

  Wrenched out of time, I am wrenched from all I loved—and wrenched as well from those to whom I owed love. For the creation of a child is a mighty debt, and may only be repaid through the correct raising of a child in love and guidance. That I was unable to do. That I will never be able to do.

  What was his name?

  I can write of my son no more. For what does one say? I know not what sort of man he grew up to be, nor what other unholy plans Moloch hatched to ensnare him.…

  And why did Katrina not tell me she was with child? Why not in 1781? Why not now, when we have spoken in my dreams?

  I must not let my mind spiral inward, gnawing on questions without answers. Instead I will seek those answers. Chief among them is the question of what became of my son; but hard on the heels of that is the dark suspicion that Moloch keeps me alive because he wishes me to procreate once more—perhaps only that he may have the pleasure of taking from me another child, as my long sleep deprived me of knowing my first.

  Shake it off, Ichabod. That is what they say in this time. Shake it off.

  I will read a little more and then hope to find a ride back to the cabin. If none is available, the walk will suit me. I have enjoyed walking since I was a boy, and it is easy to lose the habit and the enjoyment of it in this age when the keys to an automobile seemingly jingle in every pocket.

  It approaches midnight, and the grand armies of Black Friday mobilize—but elsewhere, as I am ensconced at Trout Lake, far from the temples of commerce. I spent this Thanksgiving Day endeavoring to be thankful, and largely failing.

  A last note as Black Friday commences, and the bells of getting and spending toll throughout the land—although only in the Eastern time zone. I have learned recently that America’s vastness has demanded the creation of different times for different areas, and indeed that this happens across the world, so at this moment it is five o’clock in the morning in Britain. How odd—yet how perfectly sensible, since the rotation of the Earth brings light and dark at such a predictable pace. But I digress, the note …

  I have seen soldiers’ scrip. I have seen currencies and coin issued by Britain, France, and each of the colonies. I have bought goods with pounds and shillings, Spanish cobs, Continental dollars, Virginia ha’pennies, Rhode Island ship tokens, wampum, beaver skins … but never a rectangle of plastic with a strip of magnetically encoded information on one side. Is this even money? One can slide these plastic rectangles through machines crafted for the purpose. These machines speak directly to the bank holding the purchaser’s money, and deduct the amount in question. Surely these computers possess some intelligence; otherwise how would such a thing be possible? A “cashless economy” is spoken of; but how can any man trust a machine to keep his money? I certainly would not. The only real money is that in a pocket. All else is numbers only, an endless series of promissory notes. Abigail, of course, finds this quite funny. Quoth she: “You’re the youngest curmudgeon I ever met, Crane.”

  I gather some of the coins in my pocket are quite valuable to collectors now. Should I ever have need of extra resources, I shall not hesitate to part with them!—although I would not be able to spend them on the new sibling of Black Friday, the Cyber Monday. On this day The Amazon holds unchallenged sway, and millions of dollars vanish invisibly over the Internet, as the post grows heavy with the cargo of packages traveling from storehouses all over the country to houses, occupied by people who no longer even wish to leave their homes for purposes of commerce. How strange and isolating the apotheosis of convenience can turn out to be.

  [December 8]

  I have now seen two of the popular sporting pastimes of this nation, and I find the differences between them instructive.

  Baseball is quite pastoral, and its complexities soon become apparent to the patient observer. Even in the amateur form in which I first encountered it, the charm of the game was clear: the imperative to round the bases and return home, each completed circle advancing a team toward victory. Baseball is a game of circles, of cycles, and of eternal things. A circle has no end, and the territory of the home run encompasses the infinite distance beyond the fence. I have since watched more baseball on television, and am utterly charmed by it. There was a game known as stoolball in the Britain of my youth, as well as cricket, and both seem clearly to be predecessors of baseball, though I am no scholar of sport.

  Football is quite different. All is measured to the inch and no man may step beyond the boundaries of the field lest play stop immediately. The field is a rectangle, rigorously measured, unlike the stadia of baseball, which vary considerably in dimension and aspect. A joyless game, I find, and even so, it is the unifying force of Thanksgiving, even more than the ritualized consumption of a turkey that bears as much resemblance to the wild bird as I do to a grizzly bear. It is quite a martial exercise, and television announcers emphasize that impression by the constant invocation of the lexicon of battle. Never, outside the halls of governmental deliberation, have I seen an event in which so much is said about so little.

  And what in the name of all that is holy have dancing girls in quite scandalous décolleté to do with a sporting event? It makes one yearn for baseball—or for the football I remember from England, in which players used their feet for more than running. This game is apparently known as soccer now, and is perplexingly unpopular in the United States despite its adoration in virtually all other nations.

  [December 17]

  Purgatory. One must trace the concept back to its roots. It is primarily a conceit of the Roman Catholics now, but the idea reaches back much farther than the history of the Roman church, into the ancient traditions of the Hebrews. They prayed over their dead to purify the souls of the departed and ease their passage into the afterlife. The Egyptians, in their polytheistic way, also believed in a measuring of the soul after death, which had the result of permitting passage to the afterlife—or of annihilation by an underworld monster that stood waiting in Osiris’s Hall of Judgment. Christianity took this belief and imposed a more rigorous conception, positing Purgatory not as a place where the recently dead were judged but as a place that is no place, where souls spent time in a process of purification until they achieved worthiness to ascend into the Kingdom of Heaven.

  From Katrina I have learned that the truth is somewhat more complex. Moloch watches over Purgatory and snatches unworthy souls to be his minions. Others he cannot touch but is permitted to hold for a certain period of time. Still others he can only observe as they pass through. But in no account have I read of Purgatory being a forest; it puts me in mind of the early Puritans, writing of the trackless New World wilderness as the abode of the devil, waiting to be tamed and civilized by axe and plow and Scripture. Is this wilderness beyond the mirror an American Purgatory, then, derived from the character of those most devout of America’s first colonists? Doubtless I shall never know, but in any event Katrina appears to be a particular case. The nature of Moloch’s hold on her is unclear to me. I understand why he wants her—to dangle as a reward for Van Brunt’s continued loyalty—but I do not understand what rule of Purgatory makes it possible for him to keep her there. Perhaps it has to do with her practice of witchcraft; perhaps it is due to the magic she worked to prevent my death from the wound inflicted by Abraham Van Brunt; perhaps he is transgressing against the laws of heaven in holding her, and it is part of the demonic war he wages to bring about the Apocalypse and the End of Days.

  Things to remember:

  - turn off lights by pressing switch

  - water in the shower gets really hot and really cold and will run out

  - the big box in the kitchen keeps food cold and it will last longer than a
day

  - images on the tele-vision? might be real

  - taxes are really high

  - coffee shops are everywhere

  - electricity was put into service in early 1900s–Lt. Mills says it is a good thing

  - skinny jeans are terrible

  - find a tailor (?)

  - learn the rules of baseball

  There is only one way to find out.

  How dispassionately I write, when my heart and mind churn with rage and anxiety.

  I will reach Katrina. I must and shall, and have already taken the first steps to make it possible. Abigail will likely not approve, but it will not be she who undertakes the risk. It is not she who suffers the knowledge of her beloved under Moloch’s fearful sway.

  All this sitting and writing makes me mad. Winter is coming. I should lay in a supply of wood. The feel of an axe handle in my hands will be a welcome change from this pen.

  One had little leisure while fighting for the colonies’ independence, but little is a far cry from none at all. Some of the officers in the rebel army possessed chessboards. The campfires, as campfires no doubt have been for millennia, were gathering places for ribald stories and comradely conversation.

  For diversion beyond this, there was little. I regarded the stars, and where I knew no constellations I invented them.

  Contrast that with my current state. One can only spend so much time staring at the walls of a cabin belonging to a dead man. And extraordinary as the Mills sisters are, their camaraderie is neither as bawdy nor as simple as it was among my revolutionary brothers. Still, Abigail and I have watched a movie together, which is what people of this time watch instead of the theater. Her television is quite enormous, much larger than Sheriff Corbin’s, with a corresponding increase in volume from “surround sound,” which true devotees regard as indispensable to the movie experience. Astonishing! It was pell-mell noise, full of what they call “special effects,” which from what I gather is a necessary part of all movies. It appears to be some sort of imperative to make things explode whenever possible—as if every story were in fact a fireworks display. I could understand practically nothing of what was said; the actors made the most absurd faces, excelling even the garish style of performance of Sheridan or Wycherley on the stages of London. The entire spectacle struck me as marvelous but nonsensical. Abigail laughed uproariously when I told her this. “That’s our age, all right,” she said. “Marvelous and nonsensical.”

  With the echoes of that movie still in my mind, I have been thinking I would very much love to play a game of chess. Perhaps Henry Parish plays; he seems the kind of man who would. In other circumstances I would seek friendship with him, and if we all remain alive after the Horsemen are routed and Moloch defeated, one of the first things I will do is set up a chessboard and offer Henry Parish the white pieces. A different sort of camaraderie than a soldiers’ bonfire, to be sure—yet one to which I am much more suited.

  Another thought, belatedly provoked by the viewing of football, many of whose players shave their heads. This is not a practice solely of sportsmen, either. A great many of the men I see have hair no longer than an eyelash. This was an unusual choice both in the American colonies and in England. Men shaved their heads then to avoid the infestation of lice, or if their profession or station required the daily wearing of a wig. A shaved head was also a punishment for certain crimes, designed to humiliate and stigmatize the person in question. I have been fortunate to avoid the ubiquitous plague of lice, a blessing I attribute to a combination of luck, Providence, and my instinct toward fastidiousness.

  I have never considered cutting my own hair, save to prevent it from growing long enough to interfere with the natural motions and use of my hands, or on those occasions when formality has demanded I don a powdered wig—which I detest. Few those instances have been, and for their rarity I am fervently thankful.

  It seems, in any event, that the stigma of the shaved head has long since died out. For my part, I will keep my hair as it is. Not for me the luxuries of the hair salon.

  It seems the Sisterhood of the Radiant Heart were not the pure allies I had understood them to be. It was they Katrina fled after she stopped my soul on the verge of fleeing my mortal remains and placed me in the cave until I could be revived. She went as far as Europe, and there discovered she was with child. As a widow with child on the run from both the British, who would hang her for a spy, and her coven, who would destroy her as a turncoat for the sorcery she worked to keep me alive, she had no choice but to go to Fredericks Manor.

  I learned this from Katrina by having Henry Parish strangle me to the point of death, thereby easing my path to Purgatory. Katrina was startled to see me there, and I was decidedly more than surprised to see that we were in the hallowed environs of Trinity Church—yet in Purgatory. The illusions of demons are without limit. She was lighting a votive, and had many questions to ask me, but knowing I had but little time, I insisted my own queries must take precedence. Too, I was battling conflicting impulses. I wanted to sweep her into my arms and remain with her forever; I wanted to interrogate her, chastise her, demand her reasons for never telling me of our son. There was no time to work through such turmoil, so I remained focused on what I needed to learn.

  Our son’s name was Jeremy, after my grandfather. She was forced to surrender the baby boy to the care of Grace Dixon, fearing what would happen to him if the witches of her coven found her before she had made arrangements for his rearing. She was hunted by the Four-Who-Speak-as-One, a quartet of powerful witches of the Radiant Heart, whose combined might she could not hope to oppose.

  We would have spoken more, but the entire edifice of the church began to shudder, as if under the assault of a being of monstrous strength. I caught a glimpse of it as I receded from Purgatory back into the world, where Abigail and Henry Parish awaited my tale with considerable impatience. Upon hearing what had transpired in Purgatory, Parish made ready to leave, but Abigail prevailed upon him to stay a while longer and assist us in our quest to understand what had happened to Jeremy—and what we might do to release Katrina from Purgatory. Our first stop was the historical society library, where we navigated first the librarian’s strong desire to be left alone with her books and then the cryptic organization of her stacks. Shortly we discovered that Grace and her husband died in a fire, and Jeremy had survived; but this news was soon more than counterbalanced by the discovery that Jeremy was said by the townspeople of the time to be able to start fires when his emotions overmastered him. Immediately I suspected that he must have inherited his mother’s native talent for witchcraft—and, in addition, I found myself in the delicate position of expressing remorse for my child’s role in the deaths of Abigail’s ancestors. She, hardheaded and stoic as always, dismissed the idea of blaming the boy, and we had no chance to speak of it further, for a scream from the parking lot drew us outside … where we found the librarian, Isobel Hudson, savagely murdered.

  Sometimes it seems as if everyone I speak to in Sleepy Hollow is immediately in danger of his or her life. Soon all but the suicidal and deranged will avoid me like the plague.

  [December 24]

  We transferred some of the society’s materials back to the archives. Henry noted the presence of the sign of the Sisterhood of the Radiant Heart on a golden box—Isobel Hudson had been one of them! Henry, whose senses are attuned to stimuli far subtler than those more normal humans can apprehend—for how else is a Sin Eater to detect and consume and purge sins?—recoiled from the box, saying it smelled of dire things: anger, fear, death …

  Inside it was a drawing my son had done as a boy. The paper was frail and cracking, but I could almost see his hand holding the charcoal, the other keeping the paper flat, tiny fingers spread … Abigail had seen the doll represented on the paper in the vision granted by Grace Dixon. Katrina had given him that doll, she explained—then Henry happened to touch the drawing. His eyes turned black as the void, and he recounted the tale of Jeremy’s suffering
in a Puritan orphanage, where in 1794—at the age of twelve—he was beaten by a clergyman and bled on the doll. His powers, channeled through the blood and fueled by the rage, transformed the doll into a fearsome creature driven by the imperative to protect him.

  That same creature had followed me back out of Purgatory—for I realized it was the creature I had seen a moment before I was returned to this world. The creature was loose in this time, and it was hunting down those whom it deemed a threat to Jeremy—though Jeremy himself was no longer alive to protect. Where, then, would it next strike?

  I could not make all the pieces of the puzzle fit together—Henry, however, could. He noted the presence of carnival ticket stubs dating back one hundred years in Isobel Hudson’s safe, and he said something that suddenly caused me to see everything in a different light: “Jeremy is molded from your clay.”

  Clay.

  I went to General Washington’s Bible, hearing the echo of Katrina’s voice telling me answers to future challenges would be found therein—and also hearing Henry Parish, earlier today, explain that puzzles operated by obscuring the key to their solution rather than the solution itself. Clay … a creature created to protect …

  It is a golem. It must be.

  Further, in Isobel Hudson’s possessions Abigail found a flyer for a carnival act: a quartet of seers billed as the Four-Who-Speak-as-One: Sisters of Spirit and Clairvoyance.

  It has taken too long, but at last we know what is happening. The witches who banished both Katrina and the golem are hiding in plain sight, as carnival fortune-tellers. The golem will find them, and soon.

  It appears we are going to the carnival—and to save the four witches, the Four-Who-Speak-as-One, the very four responsible for banishing my Katrina to Purgatory. I would willingly see them perish at the hands of the golem, but I must master those darker impulses—for if they banished Katrina, it is they who can recall her. Henry Parish is in agreement with this, and we also agree that Moloch would be weakened by a free Katrina, for then he would have no sway over the Horseman. And so we must fight the golem that protected my son, to prevent it from ending the lives of the witches who killed my son.