by Irvine, Alex
Being a warrior for heaven is a difficult path.
The lore of the golem most famously rests on the story of the Golem of Prague, that mighty defender of that city’s Jews in their ghetto. That golem was created from clay, by the inscription of the Hebrew word אמא—emet, meaning “truth.” It was destroyed by wiping away the first letter, turning emet into מת, met—meaning “dead.” The Golem of Prague, like Jeremy’s golem, eventually had to be destroyed because it was too violent in defense of its masters.
Four-Who-Speak-as-One. Is the secret in their names?
Isa Mal Nahum Jer
Jer Isa Nahum Mal
Malisa Jerisa Nahummal Jermal Maljerisa Jermalisa Jernahum
Perhaps they must be scrambled. Anagrams are linguistic witchery. The alchemy of letters and syllables.
Nahum = an anagram of HUMAN
Mal = Latin prefix meaning “bad”
Jer = ?
Isa = ?
The key to understanding a language puzzle—in addition to Henry’s insight that understanding a puzzle’s method is more crucial than grinding through the individual clues—lies in the relative frequencies of the letters, as with ciphers. Is this a cipher of some sort?
Mal-Nahum = bad human?
Jermal and Jerisa = unknown in any language with which I am familiar
Malisa =
Isamal =
Maljer =
I am doodling. This is a waste of time. Use your brain.
I have it!
Nahum, of course, was a prophet. This was so evident I failed to see it as germane, suspecting there must be a deeper puzzle. His name means “comforter,” which seems an odd moniker for a prophet; their writings seldom comfort any but those who desire the End Times. He wrote with quite remarkable vividness of the destruction of Nineveh, which he believed would occur as a consequence of Assyria’s heresies and oppression of the Jews.
Isa = Isaiah. “God is salvation.” The greatest of Hebrew prophets, the leading prophetic voice of Judah during the ruling years of four kings: Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. He too lived in the shadow of Assyrian bellicosity. From Isaiah 37: “Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? And against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? Even against the Holy One of Israel.” How tempting to read this as a prophecy of the demonic war—and perhaps the witches of the Radiant Heart saw it thus?
Jer = Jeremiah. “God exalts.” Known as the Weeping Prophet for the keening of his laments. He was unrelenting in his attacks on the sins of the people of Judah; they in return beat and abused him throughout his life, throwing him at least once into a cistern and plotting against his life. The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar treated him with honor when he conquered Judah—a conquest Jeremiah had predicted, and blamed on the sinful predilections of Judaeans. He, more than the other Hebrew prophets, demanded that every soul confront its individual relationship with the Almighty, and rely not on widely held opinions to guide it.
Mal = Malachi. “Messenger.” An unusual name speculated to be a pseudonym, for messenger is also the word the Hebrew Bible uses to refer to the beings we have now come to call angels. The book that bears his name is fervently messianic, and beloved of those who wish to find in the late Hebrew prophets evidence that they wrote of the coming of Christ.
Prophets all. (And, one notes, male prophets.) The Four-Who-Speak-as-One took the names of male prophets from the later books of the Jewish Bible.
What can this mean?
Henry Parish has finally gotten on his train back to the city. I trust the delay was worthwhile, providing as it did the spectacle of the golem wrecking the grounds of the carnival after the Four-Who-Speak-as-One met me and matter-of-factly acknowledged that their deaths had arrived with me. I had no intent to kill them—quite the opposite—but they would not be dissuaded.
And they were right. But before they died, I learned more about my son’s life … and death. For it was they who killed him. They had a reason, so they said. The golem had begun killing too many denizens of Sleepy Hollow, wherever it perceived a threat to Jeremy. The Four-Who-Speak-as-One found him, and worked a charm to imprison the golem in Purgatory. Then they offered Jeremy the protection of their coven, since they coveted his power—but also, I believe, because they felt a lingering sense of guilt over their hounding of Katrina.
He refused; whether from fear or mistrust they did not say and I will never know.
Fearing to leave him unleashed, with too much power and not enough restraint, the Four-Who-Speak-as-One worked a charm together and stopped his heart. They did not flinch from the admission, even knowing that the golem was coming to render the only justice it knew.
I let it. I made no attempt to save them. I faced the golem willingly to preserve the lives of my friends, but the witches who murdered my son? I, who had come to save them from the golem, lifted no finger when the golem rampaged into their tent and ended them. I will, for the rest of the days granted to me, feel a small twinge of regret … but as with my other transgressions, I will learn to make a place for that guilt within my soul, and answer for it when I must. I have never hated any human as I hated those four.
It was Henry’s insight—he, who sees through to the heart of puzzles—that if the golem was created by Jeremy’s blood, it must be destroyed by his blood. Half of his blood is my blood. Of course Henry had this small epiphany when viewing my blood on a shard of mirror, so we must not anoint him with the oil of omniscience quite yet.
I spoke to the golem. I tried to make it understand that its commission was no longer active, that the boy it existed to protect was no more, but in the end it could not reason and I was forced to destroy it. Doing so was far more difficult for me than the act of killing the men I have killed; it was the last link with my son, the only other being charged with his care after the death of his mother. When it was gone, all that remained was the doll. I will keep it. It is the last thing on earth my son touched.
Before Henry Parish left, he told me something which I found immensely heartening. He understood now, he said—in his characteristically understated manner—that it was indeed his duty to render the assistance of his particular abilities to the Witnesses’ battle against evil. We also spoke, while we were in the tunnels, of his parents’ deaths, and the bond between father and son (thinking of which weighs heavily on my mind these days). A sensitive man, Henry Parish, and not just because he is a Sin Eater. He is a good man, who has suffered much and not let his suffering twist or destroy him. I am very glad to count him as an ally.
After he left for the train station, Abigail gave me a Christmas stocking. I am charmed. Perhaps I am not entirely immune to holiday cheer after all!
[December 25]
Jeremy. I write to you though I am the only one who will ever read the words. I am sorry, my son. I am sorry I did not survive to see your birth. I am sorry I could not save you from the brutality of the orphanage, or from the elemental urges that overwhelmed you as a boy. I am sorry I was not there to raise you properly. I am sorry for the sorrows of your life, the fear that led you to turn to the golem. I hope it was a friend to you, and not solely a mindless guardian. I am sorry the Sisterhood of the Radiant Heart could not persuade you to join them, and that they could not respect your refusal.
My own father was a difficult man, disapproving of my choice to become a soldier and adamantly opposed to my allegiance with the Continentals. I swore to myself when your mother and I were married that I would not be so hard and inflexible with my own son—yet I never had the chance to better his example. Believe me, my son, I would have, if granted the opportunity to see your birth and infancy. That is the worst failure of a man: absence when his children need him. For that, too, I am sorry.
When the good men and women of the world do such things as this, what is it we fight for? Would Moloch be worse? He consumed children in fire, and the Radiant Heart reached out and stopped your radiant heart, ending your life, which veered from confusion to tra
gedy. How am I to live with this? How do I maintain faith?
That is the question. It has no answer, save to take the example of Job and know that perseverance is its own reward. If no man ever kept to the path of righteousness despite the cruelties of the world and of heaven, all hope would be lost. Right action matters. But it is hard to go on.
This, this is the doubt without which there cannot be faith. But I would have a little less of one, and I would have the other come a little more easily. Moloch taunts me, for he knows my faith has feet of clay. But yet I will be strong.
At least I have this doll that you touched. It protected you for a time—as I could not.
Moloch has changed his tack. He must believe the wind to be shifting against him. He drew me into the Mirror World—Purgatory—but only for a moment. “When you know the saint’s name, War will take form.” This was Moloch’s riddle. He added a threat, that he would have Abigail’s soul and I would be the one to deliver it to him.
He is angry now. He drew me to Purgatory, but he could not hold me. Instead he sought to cow me. I take that as a sign of fear.
And just like that, my crisis of faith is over.
Before I forget, Captain Irving reports unusual occurrences during his most recent visit to his daughter on the island of Manhattan. He suspects an evil influence is following him, and is possibly a threat to his daughter, Macey. Poor creature, she is confined to a wheelchair. A spitfire personality, nonetheless.
[January 3]
Abigail has brought me clothing. We were to go shopping together, but at the last moment I demurred, unable to face the throngs at the immense marketplace known as a “shopping mall.” I require solace, being of a scholarly nature and more suited, I fear, to the company of books than of my fellow humans. She is regarding me now with ill-disguised impatience as I scribble this down rather than greeting her and rousing myself to try the fit of the clothing she has purchased.
I will be frank. I despise the fashions of this age. I look around me and it seems that in 2013, one may dress according to one’s whims. Suits of clothes are side by side with shirts bearing hideous slogans and designs. Short pants are common among adults, which is an innovation I might have found quite welcome in the sweltering climes of Georgia—yet it seems quite out of place here in New York, where the temperatures are cool enough to make short pants seem immodest.
Even trousers are worn in various ways: cinched at the hips by a belt, hitched up to the waist, even left to sag down to mid-buttock; incredibly these last attract no attention from police despite their flagrant transgression against common decency. The dress of women is form-fitting to a degree that would have paralyzed any man of the eighteenth century, and I will say no more lest that track of thought lead me to impure thoughts. Also, I despise zippers.
The fault, however, is not in the fashions, for they have faded throughout the ages, and no particular moment is responsible for the foolishness of its dress; no, the fault lies in me, for I have come to clutch at my difference as an act of self-preservation. My clothing, which survived battles and army encampments—not to mention two centuries and more lying in a cave—has become dear to me. I have always resisted imbuing physical objects with emotional significance; however the impulse is nigh impossible to resist when all that ties me to my former life is my clothing. I am, it seems, not quite prepared to admit that I live in this future—though to deny it of course is rank idiocy.
Abigail has begun to tap her foot. That is a signal whose meaning has survived the centuries. I must put down my pen and adorn myself with the raiment of 2013. Trepidation, thy name is new clothing.
These damnable clothes. How did I let Abigail beguile me into changing from the dress that suits me into these outlandish garments? I can scarcely move. Tight-fitting breeches were the style in 1781, and apparently again in this time—but this denim fabric clutches at me in a way that wool never did. Perhaps I shall grow accustomed to it, or perhaps I will stake out the territory of the unfashionable for myself; I am no fop, and never was.
I have heard of very few instances in which a demon could migrate at will from one body to another. Demonic possession typically is ended in one of two ways. Either the demon abandons its host or it is exorcised. While thinking of the Devil’s Trap some days ago, I copied down an exorcism ritual. There are a number of them, each with its own partisans and its own efficacies in certain situations. Here is one I saw copied into a document once folded into General Washington’s Bible.
And while we have come to rest on the topic of Washington’s Bible, I believe I shall be forced to remove it from my preferred location, inside one of Sheriff Corbin’s heavy locking file cabinets. Captain Irving came to the archive and spoke to us of a demon he suspects is in Sleepy Hollow, flitting from person to person and leaving each of its former hosts with no memory of its possession. He previously saw it in Manhattan, where it threatened his daughter … and now it apparently has designs on Washington’s Bible. I am reading through it again, studying the profuse marginalia. Its pages give off the faint but unmistakable odor of rot.
Abigail has located a thick sheaf of records and documents related to possession. Sheriff Corbin’s research interests were both broad and deep. I should have very much liked to have met him. Among these documents on possession is a dossier recounting his apprehension of a woman taken over by a demon with the ability to leap from body to body, leaving each previous vessel with no memory of what had transpired during his or her possession. We studied this record and located a videocassette of Corbin’s interview with the young woman in question. On the video, Corbin gave particulars of the case and then turned the camera on the subject of the possession, who was none other than Jennifer Mills.
FROM THE DESK OF
SHERIFF AUGUST CORBIN
POSSESSION
Oldest known references come from Sumer. Very rarely attested in the Old Testament; much more frequent in Gospels and Acts. Jesus casts out demons, is accused of being possessed. Why so much more common? Unknown. Known in most cultures and religions—Koran, Surah al-Baqarah 2:275.
Typical symptoms: Increased strength. Rage and aversion to symbols holy to the local culture. Knowledge of things the person could not know—including languages—sometimes speaking in tongues.
Most shamanic cultures have rituals in place to expel demons. Physical intervention also common. Some of the earliest medical procedures known to history were performed to exorcise a spirit. Trepanation, drilling holes in the skull to release pressure, was common for centuries—believed to create a way for demons to escape. Another practice: Force nauseating drinks on the possessed, to disgust the demon. In some cultures people who survived dangerous illness changed their names, so the demon that caused the illness wouldn’t be able to find them again. Variation: some cultures call sick or possessed people by ugly or hateful names to force the demon to leave. Then the person’s true name is used again.
Often, exorcised demons are sent back to the plane/dimension/realm of their origin. At times they are destroyed. On rare occasions it’s attested that they were imprisoned in another form—most famously with Jesus and the pigs, Matthew 8, Mark 5, Luke 8.
Religious hucksters typically claim that addicts, mentally ill people, etc., are possessed by demons. I’ve seen real demonic possession and it’s got nothing to do with your other personal problems. If a demon rides you, it’s because that demon wants you. Example: Wendigo curse.
Sage, cedar, camphor, other herbs commonly make up part of exorcism rituals. Also, salt. Demons can be expelled sometimes by forcing the possessed person to drink salt water: both nauseating and anti-demon because of the salt itself.
SNEEZING. Often held to be a sign of possession, or that demons are near. Not sure if there’s anything to it, otherwise you’d have to believe there are a lot of demons around during allergy season. (Allergies as demonic possession? People with bad hay fever probably believe it.)
YAWNING. Also said to be a sign that demons
are near, and forcing the mouth open to enter. Various practices have developed to fight this—some Hindus crack their knuckles after yawning to frighten away the encroaching spirit.
~
Recent CASE: V. rare to see demons transferring bodies but I’ve observed it with this young woman. Have been unable to make an exorcism stick—also have no idea where the demon goes when it is not riding her. The subject has no memory of possession between incidents but is aware they are happening. Tough kid. See attached video recording. Possible to perform an exorcism over a wide area, to force demon to abandon body-jumping? Unknown. More research required. She needs help and I’m not sure I can give it to her.
What a harrowing experience possession must be. I pray I never experience it. Miss Jenny refused at first to view the tape, although she knew of the incident; she had no memory of her possession—as Corbin stated in the file—and she had no desire to be reminded of it. Abigail convinced her only by confronting her with the potential danger to Captain Irving’s Macey—Miss Jenny has a soft spot, as the saying goes, for the young girl. I believe she sees some of her own strength of will in Macey, as do I.