The Secret Journal of Ichabod Crane

by Irvine, Alex

  She consented, and we viewed the next portion of the tape, wherein the demon possessing Jennifer spoke of the Horseman. It warned Corbin he would die by the Horseman’s hand—which was true—and that the Horseman would also kill Abigail. Then she suffered some sort of violent episode and the tape broke off, presumably because she damaged the recording equipment.

  Watching with us in the archives, Jennifer withdrew into the stony silence that is her primary defense against unwanted facts. She refused to help; she could not help. Clearly she suffered from a deep sense of violation. She left, and we—Abigail, Irving, and I—considered what to do next. Irving left with his family for a safe house, where he was to meet a Father Boland, who had some experience with battling and exorcising demons. It was him Irving had gone to Manhattan to see a few days before.

  I caught up with Jennifer before she could drive away and begged her to reconsider. Macey’s life was at stake, and perhaps the lives of others as well. Jennifer opened to me, ever so slightly, and admitted—in strictest confidence—that she had been subject to periodic episodes of possession ever since she and Abigail encountered Moloch in the forest when they were young girls. This revelation would have been disturbing enough, but Jennifer added to it a heartbreaking tale of self-sacrifice: The reason for her multiple incarcerations was her unshakable resolve to prevent the demons riding her from harming her sister. She caused herself to be imprisoned, over and over, to increase the probability that her possessions would occur while she was secured and away from Abigail.

  Moved by this tale, I asked Jennifer yet again to aid us. We had learned all we could from Corbin’s files; only Jennifer herself could make us see what we were missing. She agreed to another viewing of the tape, and as I write we are playing it over and over, looking for the clue that must be there.

  She found it! There was a passage in the recording where Jennifer falls into glossolalia—speaking in tongues—but we had an instinct that there might be a message in this apparent gibberish. By re-recording it and playing it backward—that most fundamental of codes, the reversal—the gibberish was revealed (due to my facility with languages) to be Aramaic. This is a favored language of demons due to its being the spoken language of most of the Jews of Galilee during the life of Christ, who himself spoke it. The demonic love of perversion extends to their use of the language spoken by the son of God—or, as Jefferson would have it, the rebellious rabbi who wielded his faith like a sword against the tyranny of the Romans. Either suits me.

  Once I understood the language—and here Abigail rolled her eyes and said, “Of course you speak Aramaic”—I could hear that Jennifer was saying Ancitif cannot be defeated.

  Ancitif. Once we puzzled out the syllables of that name, we tried various spellings in this omniscient index known as Google—and we located the story of the possession of the nuns of Louviers, more than three hundred years ago. A nunnery there came under the sway of lustful demons possessing the vicar and director. They beguiled the young nuns into a number of orgiastic practices—and, it is alleged, ritual murders as well—before one of the nuns was overburdened by her guilt and leveled accusations at the two men responsible. These, Vicar Thomas Boulle and director Mathurin Picard, were duly charged. The name of the demon said to have masterminded these actions was Ancitif. Picard died before the trial, under unknown (but, one suspects, unnatural) circumstances. Father Boulle met his end at the stake.

  The nun, Sister Barbara, who broke Ancitif’s hold and made the accusations, was said to be freed by sacred lanterns from the cathedral adjacent to the nunnery. When I saw these lanterns, I recognized one of them! It was in Benjamin Franklin’s possession when I visited Franklin in his house at Passy, in France, in late 1778. I was there as a courier for General Washington, charged with returning certain documents to Washington. I remember the lantern well, and remembered too that Franklin had given one to a chosen delegate from each of the colonies. Jennifer broke into my reverie to announce that she too had seen one of them, and knew where we could procure it.

  We are going to get that lantern now.

  Much has happened. We did indeed collect one of the Louviers lanterns, from a family called Weaver that appears to be part of a lively subculture of apocalyptic maniacs in the United States of 2013. Colloquially they are known as “preppers,” for their obsessive focus on preparing for the End of Days—whether by nuclear means or demonic action, or simply through the (in their view) inevitable collapse of an immoral civilization. It was such a family, the Weavers, who possessed one of the sacred lanterns of Louviers. Apparently part of their “prepper” regimen includes the collecting of occult artifacts for use in whatever version of the end of the world they might encounter. Their house was a fortification as much as a dwelling place, ringed with traps and alarms; the Weavers themselves were as heavily armed as Abigail’s officers—perhaps more so—and all too willing to use their weapons. Oddly, it seems those most deeply invested in the idea of the end of the world are also those who yearn for a pretext to perpetrate violence.

  I, who know the real dangers of the End of Days, feel quite differently about violence. I am no shirker of what is necessary, but neither am I given over to bloodthirstiness or latent sadism. I am a warrior, a Witness. People such as the Weavers mean well, perhaps, but their fear curdles their good intentions, and endangers us all.

  Jennifer knew them, and had participated in paramilitary training with them, but that made no difference in their demeanor when they caught Abigail and me coming out of their compound with the Louviers lantern. Guns were drawn and leveled, and only Jennifer’s forceful presence allowed us to escape without bloodshed.

  While we were thus occupied, however, the demon Ancitif was riding one of Captain Irving’s officers into the very safe house where Irving thought to protect his family. There it killed Father Boland and forced Irving to go to the archives and give it General Washington’s Bible. By the time we had disentangled ourselves from the Weavers, Irving and the demon-haunted Macey were already there. Had we not anticipated subterfuge on the part of the demon Ancitif, our cause might have been fatally set back—yet anticipate we had. I had removed the Bible from the archive ahead of time, and we also had enough time to prepare an ambush. I observed from a hiding place in the mouth of one of the tunnels leading away from the archive as Ancitif taunted Irving for his inability to keep his family safe. Irving bore this abuse, and further, he refused to tell Ancitif the locations of the Witnesses, information the demon desired most fervently. Little did Ancitif know that both Witnesses were within earshot at that moment, and preparing to announce themselves.

  Miss Jenny once again was invaluable. She made herself a target of the demon’s attention, and with incredible force of will prevented Ancitif from possessing her once again. Her diversion saved the life of Macey’s mother, whom the demon was preparing to kill; once its attention was fully focused on its former host, we were able to maneuver it into an incomplete salt ring. As it raged, I leapt from my place of concealment and completed the ring, trapping the demon within. Repelled by the salt, which all demons hate, Ancitif could do naught but shower us with the most horrible invective as I began the recitation of the exorcism. Empowered by the Louviers lantern, the ritual froze Macey’s demonic form in place and expelled the demon, with awful curses and screams of rage.

  We have returned Irving and his family to their home. Macey has no memory of her possession, which is just as well. I fear, however, that there will be effects on her mother, which may not reveal themselves fully for some time. Knowing your child is possessed must be terrible enough; experiencing the infernally strong grasp of that child’s hands around your throat surely must leave scars invisible to the eye.

  We fear our children, and sometimes with good reason, for it is through their actions that we understand our failures. I see this only at a distance, for I had no effect on Jeremy—save by my absence, which is the signal failure of any loving parent.

  For now, it is time to sit
and gather my thoughts before Abigail arrives. We have developed a habit of convening in the aftermath of an event like this one just past, perhaps to share a glass of wine, perhaps only to share confidences. (The wine, I must say, is superb, far superior to the swill common in my day—although nothing matches a fine Madeira, a bottle of which was opened to toast the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In any event, I am heartily glad that the temperance movements that surged through the colonies have not persisted. The pleasure of a libation—in moderation, of course!—should be denied to no man or woman.)

  I enjoy these conversations over drinks, and I have come to care deeply about Abigail. I am distant from all that I know, save for the irruptions of my previous life into this present, and those only serve to undermine my ability to acclimate myself to life in this maddening, astounding twenty-first century. Speaking with Abigail, simple talk between friends, is the best—perhaps the only—medicine with any therapeutic value against my peculiar malady.

  The revelation of Jennifer’s secrets has caused me to wonder whether the same might be true of Abigail. There is no evidence to suggest that she has suffered bouts of possession, but that is not the only means by which a demon may work through an unknowing human. Apart from her recollection of seeing the four trees and Moloch, Abigail’s memories of her three days lost in the forest are gone, either erased or suppressed. She feels she should remember, however, and this feeling—together with her terrified renunciation of the experience in front of Jennifer—has transformed into an unbearable burden of guilt and denial; Jennifer, in contrast, embraced the vision. She opened herself to the reality of the demonic realms, and then her betrayal by her sister damaged her badly enough to render her vulnerable to Ancitif—and perhaps other demons as well? We do not know. Neither of them has the equilibrium one must possess to fight an enemy as wily and without compunction as our demonic adversaries. Both took up arms, which I find quite interesting—as if they knew that they were to be pressed into service in a war. Abigail chose legal means, Jennifer the route of the rebellious freedom fighter and soldier of fortune; yet both have arrived with hard-earned skills that will serve us well in the future. One hopes they will be able to resolve whatever barriers still lie between them.

  [January 6]

  Dream last night: I sat at supper with my father and my son. Neither spoke. On the wall, looming over the table, a portrait of General Washington. There was an empty chair at the table. The centerpiece was an enormous platter on which sat a whole roasted calf. All of us held knives, but none was willing to make the first cut.

  My gift of eidetic—or “photographic,” I must remember to say, since the word eidetic is not commonly known; I have only recently learned it myself—memory is, I fear, somewhat less impressive in an age when everything is on videotape, a technological wonder in and of itself, now superannuated by digital storage. I try to learn this age’s methods of speaking, its jargon, even its rhythms. As I look back over these pages, do I already detect changes in the natural patterns of my syntax, learned and cultivated for three decades of life in the eighteenth century? Is a few weeks enough to effect such a change?

  Totally.

  That caused me physical pain.

  I am sorry for Father Boland’s death. He knew the tricks of the old demonologists, but was betrayed by that old bugbear, human error. I am intrigued that he knew of the protective qualities of salt. What is the old saying? “The Devil liketh no salt in his meat”? Like other folkloric truisms, this one is rooted in lost knowledge—in this case, salt’s strong repulsion of demonic entities. For salt is eternal and incorruptible; it preserves what it touches, as with salted meats; it is the alchemical antithesis of the corruption and fickleness at the heart of demonic being. Father Boland knew this, and laid lines of salt around the safe house. However, when we had a chance to look over the scene, I noted that someone had interrupted the salt barrier across the threshold of the front door. This must have been an accident, as the demonically possessed officer would have been unable to touch the salt, or by any action cause it to be moved. A terrible misfortune, and one that cost lives—also a lesson in the dire consequences of even the smallest errors in this war we fight.

  Abigail has recovered General Washington’s Bible from its hiding place here at the cabin. I again notice a pungent smell about the book—a thoroughly nauseating stench, if I am to be honest—and I believe I now recognize it.

  (Abigail’s pithy assessment: “Smells like one of the pigs Jesus put those demons into.”)

  One of the pillars of eighteenth-century spycraft, as in any other age, was the transmission of hidden messages. The liquid obtained from the crushed and strained bodies of a certain species of glowworm makes a superb invisible ink—save for the unfortunate odor it begins to emit as the natural processes of decay occur within the molecules of the liquid. It is this smell that emanates from the pages of General Washington’s Bible.

  There is a message here.

  December 18, 1799. That is the date written in the glowworm extract; it is written in General Washington’s hand, which I know as well as I know my own; and it is four days after his death, when he was no longer general but president—or, more correctly, ex-president, having handed executive authority to his successor Adams.

  Did George Washington write in this Bible after his death? One is tempted to employ the principle of Occam’s razor, that the simplest explanation is the best—and that would lead to the conclusion that Washington was simply noting the future date to remind himself of an event or obligation. However, if I have learned anything in the course of my battle with the minions of Moloch, it is this: Demons care not a fig for Occam’s razor.

  This date is a clue. It must lead somewhere, and I must find out where. If General Washington meant this Bible to find its way into my possession then I suspect this clue was meant for me. After all, General Washington was a perspicacious man, and would surely have made arrangements for his soldiers to continue to fight in the event he did not survive to see the successful prosecution of the war against Moloch.

  And, as he made clear to me, I was one of those soldiers—by which, I now understand, he meant I was a Witness. Why he never told me as much himself is a mystery I have not yet been able to unravel.

  Shortly before I fell to the Horseman’s axe, I spoke to General Washington. This was in July 1781, shortly after Comte de Rochambeau had arrived in White Plains with French reinforcements the exhausted Continental Army desperately needed. Washington wished to attack New York, but Rochambeau dissuaded him, arguing that a strike at General Cornwallis in Virginia was both more feasible and in the end more decisive—for to dislodge Cornwallis would cripple the British and isolate their remaining forces in the north. At length Washington agreed. Before he left with the combined Franco-American force (which I have since learned won a great victory at Yorktown!), he wished for a private consultation with me.

  We met in a house on the banks of the Bronx River. The army was to begin its march in the morning, but before their departure Washington wished to give me a most grave commission. Crane, he said. It is destiny that has brought you to America, and that destiny calls for you to play a pivotal role in the war that is to come. By that he meant not the Revolution, but the broader conflict of the forces of light against the legions of darkness.

  I stand ready, General, said I; whatever task you set me, know that I will not rest until it is completed.

  You have a gift, Washington said. You see through the human masks demons have learned to wear.

  Of course, he referred to Tarleton. I know this now, but at the time I thought he was speaking figuratively. The nature of the gift to which he referred was unclear to me then. This was the first time General Washington had ever spoken openly of the work we did, the clandestine war that lay behind and underneath the Continental Army’s battle for the independence of the colonies. In my naiveté I took him to mean spycraft; there is much I now see in a different light, and much I wis
h Washington had shared more openly, that I might have done him better service—and perhaps saved Katrina and Jeremy from what befell them.

  Much of what we do—perhaps all of what we do—will be lost to history, he went on. You must not fight for glory, but for what is good and holy and right.

  So I have endeavored to do, sir, I answered.

  Remain here in New York, he said. Search out those among the redcoats a Hessian with the mark of a drawn bow. It may be a tattoo, it may be a scar. Find this man, for if you do not, he will lead a charge against us, and it will be such a charge that no army solely composed of men shall hope to resist it.

  He detailed to me the forces he would leave in my command. Good men, seasoned veterans—Mohawk scouts and fighters as well. We were to hunt these men who bore the mark of the bow. Then it was time for him to rest before the march to Virginia began in the morning. Before we parted for the last time, however, he grasped my arm and offered these parting words:

  Good will always rise.

  We parted then, with those words in my mind—I recalled him saying the same thing once before, but more fully, during another meeting: Good will always rise, like Lazarus from the grave.

  I did not take his words as prophecy at that time, but in retrospect I see them as such.

  I have it. Lazarus. I must let Abigail know.

  I have returned home to a most disturbing and mysterious note. While I do not recognize the sender, I have my suspicions about his identity …

  [January 7]

  Damnable, this “autocorrect.” I am convinced that the “text message” is an infernal conspiracy designed expressly to promulgate misunderstanding. Thrice I have messaged Abigail and each time this phone has changed my words. I spoke to the voice inside calling herself Siri, but she was no help. Perhaps my device is already obsolete; heaven knows obsolescence is built into everything these days.