The Secret Journal of Ichabod Crane

by Irvine, Alex

Or if our substance be indeed Divine,

  And cannot cease to be, we are at worst

  On this side nothing; and by proof we feel

  Our power sufficient to disturb his Heav’n,

  And with perpetual inrodes to Allarme,

  Though inaccessible, his fatal Throne:

  Which if not Victory is yet Revenge.

  That quieted my mind. The pen does the will of the brain, the hand is the instrument. Yet the sentiments expressed are anything but tranquil. If this Moloch of the Hessians is the same warlike spirit Milton knew (for one who has seen what I have seen must surely believe that Milton knew rather than invented; a visionary he was despite his blindness, or indeed perhaps because of it)—if this Moloch is the same, we are in for a weary struggle, and only faith will permit us to believe in our eventual triumph.

  I have read of the Lesser Key of Solomon in any number of texts on demonology. First known during the Crusades, it came under the protection of the Knights Templar until its location was lost following their denunciation and bloody suppression by Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V. It is a book whose contents teach the would-be sorcerer the means of unlocking a door to the seventh circle of hell, where seventy-two demons wait eternally for their opportunity to escape into our world. By its other name, the Lemegeton, it has existed since medieval times, and was compiled from yet older sources.

  I have seen copies of this book before, yet it appeared quite differently to the Hessians this day. One suspects that is due to Moloch’s power and control. Miss Jenny seems to know of the book as well, and she also has knowledge of the lore of the Knights Templar, which I would not have expected in a woman of her tender years. She and Abigail both seem to me, in the phrase of Juliet’s father, but strangers to this world as yet … although if one were to count up our birthdays, mine would not number too differently from theirs. I must remember this, lest I appear patronizing to two such vigorously intelligent and competent young women.

  Not for the first time—nor, I hope, for the last—my gift of memory played its part, as I was able to sketch out the map as I had seen it projected from the sextant. Abigail noted the marked location, where General Washington had the chest containing the Lemegeton buried, as currently occupied by the Dutch Reformed Church—reformed from what, I had occasion to wonder—and we made haste to get there before the two other Hessians could make the same discovery and unlock the awful potential inherent in the Lesser Key.

  Miss Jenny’s courage under fire was quite impressive to me, and I expressed this to her, whereupon she explained that during the course of her travels in Sheriff Corbin’s service, she had seen combat with rebellious forces in Mexico and what she called South Sudan. I know of the Sudan only as the region in Africa where the Blue and White Nile flow together, and that thanks only to the accounts of explorers read in the British Library during my early studies. So too with a nation now called Somalia, which I understand to be in the Horn of Africa, near the ancient civilization of Ethiopia—where, it is said, the Ark of the Covenant itself is hidden away and guarded by the deathless resolve of the Knights Templar and their descendants.

  There was no time to speak in more depth, for we had arrived at the Dutch Reformed Church. We engaged the two Hessians as they were sacrilegiously performing the Lesser Key’s ritual of opening in the sanctuary. Within a burning pentagram composed of the pages of the book itself, the seventy-two demons strained at the thinning membrane separating them from our world and their infernal plane. Jennifer again demonstrated her bravery, as with a gun to her head she encouraged Abigail to think of stopping the ritual instead of protecting her. Abigail refused either choice, finding instead the third way of throwing the book itself into the fire. The agony of the demons as they were driven back from our world was terrible to hear, and driven by the fury of battle, I drove one of the Hessians into the closing portal, consigning him to the hell he wished to serve.

  A recollection of a humorous nature: NorthStar. Some cars are equipped with a means of communicating with distant monitors who address the driver in the event of a mishap. The technology involved is difficult to explain, it seems. I gather it has something to do with machines orbiting Earth itself, miniature mechanical moons numbering in the thousands, each of which receives and transmits signals by means of some electrical field or beam. The telephones in every pocket operate using the same mechanism. How the electrical field transmits sound is a mystery to me.

  In any event, Abigail’s car emitted some sort of signal, to which one of these NorthStar monitors, a young lady named Yolanda, responded. I spoke to her and assured her nothing was amiss, after which we struck up a heartfelt conversation. This young woman was lovelorn and uncertain how to answer the edicts of the heart, and she confided in me. It being churlish to do otherwise, I answered her confidences with such advice as I deemed appropriate. How incongruous in the midst of a war between heaven and hell, to find oneself playing soothsayer to an utter stranger—and, what is more, an utter stranger who might have been on the very moon. I could not have anticipated that a disembodied voice speaking to me through the car would require counsel, but such is what I endeavored to provide. And indeed she too salved some of my emotional wounds; I spoke to her of Katrina, my love for her, and the difficulties of our separation. Yolanda was a lovely young woman, and a comfort in a lonely time.

  Also of interest today: Captain Irving suspects a Hessian turncoat in the ranks of his constabulary. Spy hunters of some sort are coming from Manhattan, which from what I understand is now one of the world’s great cities, with a population of some sixteen million. I remember traveling there on errands for General Washington, when it was a settlement at the island’s tip, thickly forested and well watered by not just the Hudson and Haarlem Rivers but numerous smaller streams as well. It was much smaller than Boston or Philadelphia then, but in the two centuries since it has far outstripped them.

  I remember New York as a thriving port, where the Dutch presence was still visible not only in the names of streets and landmarks but in the practical and thrifty ways of its citizens. Not for them the pretensions of Boston or the lofty ruminations of the Philadelphian; New York was a city where there was much to do, and the people there set about doing it. I understand it is now much the same, and has acquired a reputation for brusqueness as well. It was one of my favorites of all American settlements; I do hope to see what has become of it.

  Another product of my researches, this bit of doggerel, apparently known as the “Boston Toast”:

  And this is good old Boston,

  The home of the bean and the cod.

  Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,

  And the Cabots talk only to God.

  Ha! Quite so. Even when I knew that city, its social snobbery was renowned.

  I have not dreamed of Katrina in several days. Optimism is my true nature, but even so I fear the worst.

  [October 14]

  Walking down the street today, innocently preoccupied with the eternal war of good against evil (as one in my position often is), I collided with a woman running around the corner of the building from which I had just then emerged. She showered me with invective, and I made my excuses, although I am certain the fault was hers. Then she ran on after resetting her wristwatch. Consulting Abigail, I learned I had encountered a “jogger.” These, it seems, are people who run long distances for the sake of nothing more than running. I hereby deem this a psychological disability, and I said as much to Abigail.

  Her response? A phrase I believe I shall adopt: “Don’t knock it ’til you try it.”

  Abigail has gained conservatorship over her sister, a step toward securing Jennifer’s freedom from the apparatus of the state. In other salutary news, I am free of the sterile environs of the motel room and am now quartered in Corbin’s cabin. It suits me. There is less plastic here. More of this when I have set down the day’s events, which include a brush with death not by demonic means but by a more prosaic road to mortality: a
disease of unknown origin.

  It began with a lost boy, sick and speaking a language no one could understand. Abigail and I responded, as did medical personnel, and I realized he was speaking Middle English. The vowel sounds and lack of Latinate constructions make this period of the English language quite distinct from both its Anglo-Saxon ancestor and modern English descendant. I followed him to the hospital and continued questioning him. He gave his name as Thomas Grey and said his home was Roanoke. At this point our conversation was truncated by the officials in charge of halting the spread of the boy’s disease, which had already infected the medic who first attempted to treat him. Abigail and I were fortunate to escape quarantine ourselves.

  From the boy’s dress, demeanor, and antiquated language, I surmised he spoke not of the present-day Roanoke, Virginia, but the lost colony of Roanoke, one of the first great mysteries of the European settlement of this continent. A thriving community founded in the sixteenth century, it vanished during the period of a single year, without any known cause. The story of Roanoke had already entered the colonial mythology when I first crossed the Atlantic in 1770, and as Abigail and I began our researches we found that the myths and legends had proliferated since then. How odd that here in the twenty-first century, I still find occasion to make use of my hard-won fluency in the Middle English of the fifteenth!

  We returned to the place where the boy was first spotted, and I retraced his steps, putting to good use tracking skills I had learned as a youth foxhunting, and which were honed to excellency (I acknowledge the immodesty, but ’tis true) by scouting missions in the company of Mohawks. There were two sets of tracks, which lent credence to young Thomas’s story of an euel þerne—an evil girl—and this story grew yet more credible when the second set of tracks simply vanished. Thomas’s own tracks grew confused at that point, and rushed. I saw the ragged panic in his stride. A skilled tracker can tell much about a person’s emotions and behaviors by the minutiae of that person’s footprints: where the weight falls hardest, whether the spacing between prints is even, a dozen or a hundred different factors. It was clear Thomas was lost once this second set of prints disappeared, and it was not difficult to infer the cause. A demon had misled the boy.

  By means of a hidden bridge (and avoiding an amphibious guardian creature which I am glad to report I know of only at a distance) Abigail and I found our way across the bog to the island, and there a wonder awaited us. Roanoke, it seemed, had survived, an idyllic village arranged around a well, with people looking happy and content—their visible black veins notwithstanding. They all had the plague that was proving so lethal in the world outside, yet none of them appeared the least affected by it. I spoke to the prefect of the colony—he too spoke in a version of the language that seemed antiquated even for 1590, which he cited as the year of their exodus from Virginia. The plague began to spread among them in that year, and they understood that they were to leave Roanoke, trusting in their Creator to find a new home. The colony’s most famous resident, the first English child born in North America, little Virginia Dare, died of the plague. Her spirit inhabited a white doe, the prefect recounted, and the guidance of that doe led the colony to their new home. As long as they remained on their hidden island, protected by the doe, the progress of the disease was arrested.

  Thomas Grey, upon leaving the island, suffered the progression of the disease anew. The prefect believed him misguided by the devil; I for my part suspected Moloch.

  I asked him what was to be done. He had a simple answer: Return Thomas Grey to the island so that he could be healed and the worsening of his disease prevented. This seemed simple enough, but as with all matters related to the evils lurking in and around Sleepy Hollow, first impressions were thoroughly deceptive. The moment I exited the secret island and returned to the hospital—conferring with Abigail along the way regarding the best method by which we might free young Thomas and return him to his magically sequestered people—I too began to manifest the dread symptoms of the black-vein plague.

  Quite a number of things transpired during the past few hours, few of which I can recount firsthand, for the reason that I was under involuntary sedation. I can offer direct testimony of the welcome return—despite the trying circumstances—of my wife in a dream. She evinced concern upon seeing me, knowing that my presence in her Mirror World while I was not asleep could only mean I hovered near death. I learned to my dismay that the forested prison was in fact Purgatory, where souls persist until the heavenly authorities decree they have expiated their earthly transgressions. What could she have done to be consigned to such a place? Was her witchcraft the cause—or was her imprisonment there a result of Moloch’s machinations? I asked her and she demurred; I pressed her and she might have offered a hint—or might not—but at that moment Moloch struck. My Purgatory self was more vigorous than my sedated physical self, to be sure, and I was able to escape, swearing I would return. I know not by what means I was able to traverse the distance between near-death and full wakefulness again—save through the willpower all humans possess but so few ever employ fully—but I awoke in the hospital again and quickly conveyed to Abigail my recent discoveries. The disease officials tried to prevent our exit, but Captain Irving again proved that whatever his reservations, his heart is, as they say, in the right place.

  I made it to the island with the very last of my strength and the most crucial under the looming threat of the Horseman of Pestilence—for it was he who had infected the Roanoke colonists and he who would burst through into our world if the black-vein plague spread to enough citizens. The second Horseman, so soon! How quickly might we get our first inklings of the third? The fourth? We fought back, staying ahead of the Horseman of Pestilence long enough to submerge my failing body in the artesian water of the well at the center of the island. The same cure was attempted simultaneously for Thomas Grey, but he did not survive … and in a revelation, it became apparent that he had not been alive for quite some time. His spirit rose away, and then the spirits of the other island colonists joined his. The Horseman of Pestilence, thwarted, returned whence he had come, and the darkest times of tribulation were delayed … for how long, it is not given us to know.

  When the souls had passed on, I realized I had moved from one Purgatory to another of sorts, where the souls of the Roanoke colonists had been held these five centuries. Abigail and I, as Witnesses, had released them—and we had also forestalled the appearance of the Horseman of Pestilence. All in all, as it is commonly said in this age, a pretty good day’s work.

  It was a moment of awe, to understand what the burden and power of a Witness truly was. Then we stood, Abigail and I, in a long-overgrown ruin, the only discernible sign of its ever having been inhabited the remains of the artesian well. I was saddened by its passing; I felt as if I belonged there, or at the very least that this hidden island, ensorcelled though it may have been, brought into stark relief that degree to which I was alone in Abigail’s time. This age of plastic and satellites, cars and endless cities, where everything smells like the river downstream from a tannery … it is not mine. It will never be mine.

  Yet it is the age in which I now live—the age in which I continue to serve the cause I first joined in the long-withered year of 1771. Abigail was a great help to me in this moment. We have a connection, not just due to our mutual task as Witnesses; something more personal, transcending the gulfs and barriers of age, or race, of history.…

  I believe there is a genuine trust between us now. I have certainly entrusted her with my life, and she has reciprocated. We were thrown together by dire circumstance, and might have allowed mutual suspicion to weaken us in the face of deadly threats; but happily we have made a better choice. I am glad to count her as an ally, and perhaps a friend as well.

  Having viewed a modern hospital, it occurs to me now that this age is a fine one in which to be sick or injured. No one dies of gangrene or battlefield infection thanks to drugs known as antibiotics (one apparently created during an expe
riment on the growth of mold!). Amputations by bone saw, sterilized by whiskey, and suffered by means of biting down on a stick—these are unknown. Injections forestall the spread of diseases that ravaged my age: Smallpox has been eradicated! Scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles … these are now so uncommon that their appearance is newsworthy.

  What a difference this would have made to the colonial militias. They were sick, and poorly nourished, and fell in droves to scythes of disease. Had we this medical science, the Revolution would have been over before 1781 … and perhaps I would never have encountered the Hessian; thus it is demonstrated, perhaps, that things occur in the manner they are destined to occur.

  Now I am back in the cabin. Still I am thinking of Roanoke, and the world before engines and telephones and videotape and NorthStar and flashlights—before, to be brief, this age wherein everything seems always to happen at once. I learned how to use one of these iPhones (what arrant foolishness, this transposition of the initial capital to the interior of a word). Perhaps I am slowly assimilating this age, or it is assimilating me.…

  It is time to sleep, but I cannot stop thinking of the way Moloch misled the boy Thomas Grey, gave him flesh and drew him out into Sleepy Hollow, seeking to spread his disease. The advent of the Horseman of Pestilence cannot be far away, if it has not happened already.

  In honor of young Thomas Grey, I recall the last lines of a poem by his near namesake, which all young men of sentiment memorized when I was a boy. The entire poem invariably brings me to melancholy, and I fear melancholy is too much to face this eve—perhaps another, when Katrina and I might again meet face-to-face. For the touch of her hand on mine, I would consider the Faustian bargain.