by Irvine, Alex
Perhaps I should attend this training in “profiling” myself. Would that I could travel at will. This world is as much wonder as terror, and I hope to see a great deal more of it. For now, though, I—and Abigail—must stop the Horseman. Now that we have his head, that unimaginable task seems to hover just on the distant border of possibility.
[October 6]
It seems that Lieutenant Mills’s superiors have decided to give me the proverbial amount of rope necessary to hang myself. I am no longer housed in the asylum, which I note in passing was quite comfortable, certainly more so than some of the army encampments I endured during the former phase of my life. Now I am kept in a rooming house of sorts known as a “motel.” The accommodations here are also quite satisfactory and in some cases extraordinary. In the bath, not one but two separate spigots provide water of any temperature desired, seemingly in endless amounts. I stood for quite some time in the shower and discovered that it is very easy for one’s mind to wander when one is standing below a stream of hot water. It occurred to me that I had not had occasion to bathe for quite some time before the battle at which I encountered the Horseman. I gather that the people of this time bathe much more frequently than was the habit of my former contemporaries—and with all the hot water one could possibly desire, instead of buckets heated over a fire and laboriously conveyed to a washbasin, who would not?
One of the topics to which my mind continually returned was another dream, in which I entered Katrina’s forest prison, what I will call Mirror World. In this dream I was fleeing the Horseman until Katrina appeared and we hid ourselves in an underground walkway. There she explained to me that my instincts regarding the passage in Revelation from General Washington’s Bible were partially correct, but that I had not seen the full extent of the danger. The Horseman himself is indeed the first of the four mentioned in the Book of Revelation. He has reawakened to seek the other three and thereby bring the Apocalypse. Then she told me “one of us” was coming. I do not know what she meant by this, but I suspect an evil spirit of some sort.
Although the Horseman of Death is not the only one of his kind. The others are Conquest, or Pestilence; War; and Famine.
Did Katrina mean, perhaps, that another Horseman is coming? What else might it be?
MIRRORS.
– Seven years’ bad luck—from Roman belief that life renewed itself in seven-year cycles, and that breaking a mirror damaged the reflected person until that renewal could occur
– Bad luck averted by grinding fragments into dust, or burying, or immersing in running water
– Catoptromancy—use of mirrors for divination
– Jews cover mirrors during seven days of shivah, mourning for the dead—else the spirit of the departed can become trapped and prevented from moving on
– Chinese belief: mirrors frighten away demons due to their hatred of their own reflections
I tried to leave the motel room but was prevented from doing so by an armed guard.
Lieutenant Mills appeared before my confrontation with the guard could escalate, and we consulted. I recounted my dream and she in turn informed me that her superior, Captain Irving, is permitting us a limited time to investigate the mysterious (in his view) events surrounding the murder of Sheriff Corbin and the death of Brooks in his cell. By some sorcery the images of his death have now been altered to remove the demonic visage we observed at first, and make it appear that he took his own life by dashing his head against the wall.
Speaking of magic, I note in passing that one of this age’s incredible marvels is what they call computers. More anon; let it suffice for the moment to say how extraordinary I find it that nearly every move made by the free citizens of this republic is captured and archived by electronic means. How this universal surveillance can be reconciled with ideas of liberty I have yet to discern, yet few people here seem to think it unusual. One is put in mind of the old parable of the frog in a soup pot, put on the fire and not knowing he is being cooked because the water warms so incrementally.
Perhaps they—the ordinary citizens under such constant watch—are made to feel more secure by the astonishing advances in firearms since the musket. I have seen the personal armaments of police officers, pistols apparently capable of firing shots as quickly as the trigger can be pulled. They require no powder or wadding; these and the ball are held in a metal cartridge, discarded as the shot is discharged. With twenty of these, the Continental Army could have won the war against the Redcoats in thirty days’ time. Now they ride on the hip of every police officer, and I am given to understand that all Americans save criminals and the mentally feeble may freely possess them. Long guns have also progressed. I was a fair shot with a musket in my time, but accuracy is less important now that the constabulary and the standing army may issue each member a rifle capable of firing thirty rounds in half as many seconds. Each soldier must feel himself a walking army.
Abigail decided that she would show me the archives of her mentor, the recently deceased Sheriff Corbin. As we drove to his funeral we spoke of the legend on Katrina’s headstone stating that she had been burned as a witch. Knowing this was not true, I was able to speak with some distance about the trials of those women suspected of witchcraft—and of my confusion regarding Katrina’s silence on the matter. She must have had a reason for not telling me. I was of course aware of the activities of a coven in Sleepy Hollow, controlled by Serilda of Abaddon and allied with the British. I suspected that Katrina’s revelation must portend the existence of another coven, and when we reached the archives my intuition was confirmed. The Sisterhood of the Radiant Heart, a white-magic coven, battled Serilda and weakened her enough that she could be tried and put to death by the magistrate Robert Daniel Furth.
However, she—like the Horseman, and like me—did not remain dead, if dead she ever truly was. Abigail took me to the scene of a murder, and I noted claw marks and the use of fire. These together with Katrina’s warning in my dream confirmed for me that Serilda of Abaddon had returned to the land of the living, and though we needed no further proof, it was provided when the deceased was confirmed to be a descendant of Robert Furth. Serilda, as she was burned at the stake, swore that she would take her revenge on the magistrate’s descendants and use them to return herself to life. It appears she has begun to do so.
FROM THE DESK OF
SHERIFF AUGUST CORBIN
COVENS
Coven is a variant of covent, cuvent, dates to early sixteenth century—interesting—common origin with the word convent. Does the etymological friendship suggest relationship between work of nuns and witches? Or suggest witches took refuge in convents? Unknown. More likely just that any group of women getting together was called by a similar word.
Efter that tym ther vold meit bot somtymes a Coven, somtymes mor, somtymes les; bot a Grand Meitting vold be about the end of ilk Quarter. Ther is threttein persones in ilk Coeven; and ilk on of vs has an Sprit to wait wpon ws, quhan ve pleas to call wpon him. I remember not all the Spritis names …
—Confession of Issobell Gowdie, Lochloy, Scotland, 1662
Thirteen is a standard number for covens. When a member dies (usually the only way of leaving; not like you can just retire), individual covens have a ritual or practice in place to bring in someone new. Strength of a coven comes from the secret held in common (we’re witches!) and from the ability to work more powerful magic as a group than any individual could.
COVENS IN SLEEPY HOLLOW
Sisterhood of the Radiant Heart: I’m not sure I trust them. On the surface they seem like a bunch of do-gooders, keeping an eye on things, but they’re a little too sure of themselves, like they know they’re right about everything. Hints in their history about four of them who left years ago (maybe centuries?) after pulling off some big magical stunt. Trying to find out more.
Order of the Blood Moon: I know I don’t trust them. They’re working some bad juju. Would confront them directly, but Jennifer don’t have nearly enough firepower eve
n when J. is around. Powerful ancestor known as Serilda referred to in records—considered progenitor, mentor from afterlife—necromantic communication?
I have begun to feel useful in this battle. I was able to assist our cause in accessing the archives after we were denied entry into the building where they were housed. The colonial rebels built a network of tunnels below the streets of Sleepy Hollow during the early days of the war, for the transportation of men and goods. These tunnels overlapped previous subterranean chambers used for the burial of witches and were also used for the storage of munitions. I located an entry point in one of the basements of a neighboring building and we found our way into the archives.
Knowledge of the tunnels became crucial to our survival on this day, and not for the first time I had occasion to be thankful for my gift of a perfect memory. Aside: This is now apparently known as a photographic memory, but having learned the meaning of that term, I dislike it. Photographs are quite an interesting new technology, and I have collected some few—including this so-called mug shot the constabulary obtained when they detained me—for purposes of reference as well as novelty.
However, these photographs say nothing of smell or sound, and those are key elements of recollection. My memory does not consist of still images, but of experience, in all senses and with full awareness of motion and time. That fullness is absent in a photograph; I am no recording machine.
I assisted in the construction of the tunnels and remembered precisely where my cohort of rebels had left the store of munitions. Serilda too remembered the tunnels, since her bones were among those interred there. She returned to work a ritual that would make her whole again, using the ashes of Robert Furth’s descendants sprinkled over her bones during the last waning of the Blood Moon, for which her dark coven was named. We confronted her and learned before her destruction that Katrina was the leader of the Radiant Heart. The explosion did not collapse the tunnels or unduly damage the buildings above. We were good craftsmen, as our Mason brotherhood demanded.
I now know that Sleepy Hollow, even by the year 1781, was the battleground where the fate of all humanity would be decided for good or ill. What else, what other specters and unholy beings, remain to be discovered? Katrina, I will have need of you. Why did you not disclose to me your powers when we still walked this earth together?
Abigail is beginning to speak to me on a friendlier basis. The depth of her feeling for Sheriff Corbin now makes more sense. He gave her a path to redemption after arresting her when she was a girl, and mentored her as she chose the path of law. Also today I made the acquaintance of one Luke Morales, a colleague of Abigail’s and also her suitor. There is nothing between them now, she assured me, but I am not sure he would agree. While I am no great liar, I did manage to construct a plausible persona for Officer Morales’s benefit. To those who have no need of knowing my true story, or whose reaction to learning that story I mistrust, I present myself as a history professor on leave from Oxford, where I lecture on (what is now called) the American Revolution, with a focus on treatises of civil government. This has enough of the truth to be easily remembered and presented, since I did in fact hold a chair at Merton College before abandoning it for the life of a soldier—and, later, the life of a colonial rebel. I have gone by many names during the course of my espionage, and met many of the men (and a few women) who ensured that the dream of American independence was not strangled in its cradle. Those heroes are mythic now. Their faces adorn currency and their names—Jefferson, Franklin, Washington—appear in every town, on every map. Ichabod Crane is lost to history, and that satisfies me. I do nothing for glory or renown. I do, however, wonder what the men now known as the Founding Fathers would make of the country they so tirelessly worked to create. It is a marvel … yet like any true marvel it must be viewed with an admixture of wonder, joy, and terror.
What, one wonders, would Jefferson think of these most unnatural events? Jefferson who once used razors and glue to construct a New Testament with all supernatural elements excised? He might find it a grand joke played on him by the God in Whom he only halfheartedly believed … or, what is more likely, he would refuse to believe it at all. Although I did not know Jefferson well, I had dealings with him enough to know that he had no truck with stories of angels and demons, no matter what alleged proofs their tellers might demonstrate.
Nor would he have countenanced the true horror of taxes placed on seemingly everything under the sun. A tax on baked goods would have brought the colonists into the street even faster than the ill-fated tariff on tea. Jefferson himself might have lifted a pitchfork or a torch. Does anything remain untaxed in this world? Surely not—and all the same, the sensual pleasures of the confections known as “donut holes” are ample compensation for unjust taxation. For a “donut hole,” I would pay any tariff. This age excels in sweetmeats. Those produced at Dominic’s Bakery, near the police station, are the class of Sleepy Hollow, particularly the pumpkin-flavored variety, which I understand to be seasonal. I shall mourn their absence when the season has passed.
While Lieutenant Mills was otherwise occupied, I was able to gather a couple of newspaper articles that I suspect may prove useful. In order to trust her—and, perhaps more important, to gain her trust—I must get to know her better, and she is a deeply private woman. Her down-to-earth practicality has also made it difficult for her to accept the clear signs that she too is a Witness as spoken of in the Revelation of Saint John, though surely she will rise to the responsibility when the occasion demands it. I hope she will forgive my intrusion on her privacy.
[October 8]
Yet more supernatural marvels, and again they are tied most intimately to the lives of those around me. Abigail brought me to the scene of a suicide at which the victim’s eyes poured sand after her death.
The dead woman was a doctor of the sort known as a psychiatrist, who treated disorders of the mind. One of the signature achievements of this age is proliferating knowledge, and one of its signature obsessions is the creation of specialties. There are doctors for every part of the body, doctors who work only on remedies for single diseases. This Dr. Vega treated the patients at a nearby asylum where, Abigail confided in me, her sister Jennifer has been held for some years. Immediately before the doctor’s self-slaughter, as Hamlet would put it, Abigail had a dream in which the doctor, her Captain Irving, and I myself were questioning her about the supernatural vision she and her sister experienced as young girls. Abigail confessed to me that she did not support her sister’s truthful narrative, an act of cowardice that has haunted her ever since.
All of these things are related. And so too it emerged was the doctor’s suicide, and later the suicide by firearm of the man who found Abigail and Jennifer in the woods. Both were plagued by visions of a demonic creature. Dreams and waking visions are all too often connected; they permit the same portals of entry into the mind and soul. Considering this, we returned to the archives to investigate whether Sheriff Corbin had encountered any demonic entity using dreams. The sand in the doctor’s eyes was a physical totem of such magic, as is well-known (or so I’m told—I had never heard of the tale until Abigail recounted it for my benefit) from the old children’s tale of the Sandman. In the archive Abigail noticed a symbol and I immediately recognized its meaning: It was a sigil representing the dreaded Mohawk demon Ro’kenhrontyes, which appeared to its victims while they slept.
I spent much time with the Mohawks during the early part of the war. They had no love for the British and were stalwart aides to the colonial forces due to their intimate knowledge of the terrain and prowess on the battlefield. Two Mohawks in particular I counted friends, Wistaron and Wiroh, and it was they who first told me of Ro’kenhrontyes, who killed Wiroh’s father for failing a friend in time of need. Supernatural countermeasures, certain symbols, would ward away the demon, also known as the Sandman, if the user of those symbols believed in them. This is something few people understand. The charms and wards known to witches and shamans th
e world over will not work in the absence of belief. Faith is what gives them power, just as with the sign of the cross.
Other Mohawk creatures whose stories might be of use to us at this or some later time:
Kanontsistóntie’s: A disembodied head, with tangled hair, often created by an act of cannibalism (similar origin to the Wendigo of some western tribes) or gruesome murder. It pursues the innocent.
Yakonenyoya’ks: A race of dwarves, often invisible, who occasionally reveal their presence by the sound of their drums. Also known as the Stone Throwers. Mischievous and occasionally a genuine danger, but can be placated by offerings of tobacco or liquor.
Atenenyarhu: A giant, also known as Stone Coat for the hardness of its skin. Like Kanontsistóntie’s, sometimes created by an act of cannibalism. Other versions of their tales hold them to be an ancient race created by Flint, the twin brother of Sky Holder, or Maple Sapling. The great leader Hiawatha is said to be a reincarnation of this giant.
Onyare: Horned water creature, akin to the European and Chinese dragon? Said to capsize canoes and devour those within. Hated and opposed by the thunder god Hinun.
Nia’gwahe: Naked Bear, a giant bearlike creature whose fur fell out due to its predilection for human flesh. Can only be killed by attacking the soles of its feet.
We located a Mohawk shaman, but not in the way I would have expected. Abigail informs me that there are three hundred million people living in the United States of America, a number I can scarcely credit. Fewer than three million lived in the colonies at the time of the war’s outbreak in 1776. Naturally this hundredfold increase has overspread much of the country’s wilderness, where the native tribes made their homes and built their villages. The devastation of the Indian, I understand, is a sordid chapter in the history of the United States. It saddens me to think we repaid the Indians’ invaluable cooperation with a century and more of betrayal and war … but such is the history. And while history can sometimes be shaped by those who write it, available accounts of European treatment of the Indians are scathing, and therefore believable given the effort that must have been expended to suppress or discredit them. Those few Indians remaining are in large part cordoned off in “reservations,” but some live alongside the other races in the gigantic cities and smaller towns of these United States. One such was a man named Seamus (a Mohawk with the name of an Irish hero!), who sold automobiles (cars, as they are colloquially known) from a roadside lot. Abigail knew him, and made introductions. I spoke to him in his native tongue, shocking him, and asked for his assistance with Ro’kenhrontyes. He refused. I had anticipated this, and played my final card, remembering the circumstance that had led to the miserable death of Wiroh’s father. If Seamus did not help us, he put himself at the mercy of the demon.
