by Irvine, Alex
What is happening to me? Am I now susceptible to envy regarding communications technology? The new clothes were the doorway, and I now stand on the threshold of absorption into the consumerist fantasia of this United States.
Nevertheless, I desire a newer telephone.
Poor Andy Brooks has presented himself to Abigail and poured out his heart. He loves her and wishes her to accept Moloch, that they two might be together during the End Times—and presumably in whatever hellish kingdom succeeds the war. She has of course refused.
How many of mankind’s evil deeds are motivated by the curdling of love into obsession? True love consists not in possessing another, but in two minds, two hearts, meeting one another as equals, neither reaching to grasp yet both consenting to be held. One gives oneself in love; one cannot take another in love; for that is greed or lust going about in a debased masquerade of love.
Brooks, perhaps as a gesture of good faith to convince Abigail of the truth of his love, disclosed Moloch’s reason for hunting General Washington’s Bible. He desires not the book itself, but a clue held within it that will lead to the location of a map. The anniversary (thirteenth, if we needed any more potential misfortune) of Abigail’s encounter with Moloch looms, Monday next. He knows she is vulnerable around that date, as observance of it forces her to confront her actions—and inactions. None are so vulnerable to demons as those with a guilty conscience. She has forgiven herself, I think, as we discovered in the Valley of Death; but it is an ancient truism that forgiveness does not necessarily bring forgetting.
She rejected him, as she must. Even apart from his undead state and his allegiance to Moloch, she turned away his proposal for the homely human reason that she does not love him, and never has. Perhaps it would have been more expeditious for her to nurture his ambitions a little longer, but that level of subterfuge is not part of Abigail’s personality. Only the direct route for her! It was the honest thing to do, and the correct thing; yet is has had its consequences. Brooks is lost to us, and will be our enemy henceforth. So let us see what we may find in General Washington’s Bible about this map.
The Gospel of John, chapter 11. “Lazarus, come forth …” In General Washington’s Bible there are ten extra verses, set immediately before Jesus calls out to God at verse 41—on a page clearly cut and glued into place well after the original book was printed and bound. I had thought the extra verses, which repeated the numbering 31–40, to be a code, but what emerged was another message, written in an invisible palimpsest over those ten verses. They were a marker rather than the message itself. I ardently pray for strength that I will be able to discharge this gravest of responsibilities and spare any other from the danger I now understand is mine to face.
So it ends. There is a smear of ink on the page, from which one can extrapolate the eerie vision of George Washington, called briefly back to life and slumping to his death again, over the page on which this map and letter were drawn … Washington, a revenant! Inconceivable—and yet I see, and Abigail sees, the evidence, in Washington’s own hand.
A map to Purgatory. With such a map I could find my own way to Katrina and bring her out. Moloch knows this.
Where is this map?
One notes that at the end of John 11, Jesus has gone into hiding. Is that part of General Washington’s message? I think not. I must act decisively and quickly, for Moloch will not tarry.
We have found a vital clue. The Reverend Josiah Knapp was one of the occult figures who participated in the brief resurrection of Washington. He must have been a powerful warlock indeed, to prolong his own life span so dramatically, until his recent end at the hands of the Horseman of Death, Abraham Van Brunt; but even though he is dead, we may yet be able to make use of his connection to Washington’s ritual. His will requested that he be buried with his necklace of prayer beads—the same beads used as a focus of the necromantic energies of the ceremony. These will be laden with the sin inherent in reversing the natural cycle of life and death—and we are fortunate enough to have made the acquaintance of a man perfectly suited to interpret that sin and divine from it whether Knapp knew anything of the map’s location: Henry Parish. We will meet him soon, at the cemetery, and indulge in one more bit of grave robbing.
Henry Parish is an admirable man. The prayer beads were protected by a powerful hex that caused him great pain when he touched them, but he was not dissuaded—and now we have advanced another step in our mission to discover the location of the map to Purgatory.
Parish saw a vision of Josiah Knapp disembarking from a boat on a shoreline. Knapp and two other men were carrying something large. That was all he saw, but that may well be enough.
True wisdom is never lost, as the Masonic rites ensure its transmission. However, it is a dictum of the Freemasons that they must carry their individual secrets with them into death. This extends beyond those secrets carried in the mind, and includes objects of such particular importance that their possession must be strictly controlled. Such, I suspect, was George Washington’s guiding principle—and Josiah Knapp’s—when the arrangements for his burial were being made. The map must be with Washington, for Washington would have known the importance of making certain it did not fall into the wrong hands. The best way to do that would have been exactly what was done: Encode a message that only a very few trusted confidantes would have been able to discover.
There are two known tombs of Washington: in Mount Vernon, Virginia, and in the United States Capitol Building. Both are decoys. If Josiah Knapp carried Washington’s body to an island in the Hudson River near Sleepy Hollow—which seems certain, for Sleepy Hollow is clearly the crucial battlefield of the war, and Josiah Knapp was the guardian of the secrets of that war—then the map will not be far from his tomb. Therefore, we must search the islands and discover Washington’s real tomb before the minions of Moloch do.
I realize I have forgotten to mention that we were attacked in the cemetery by three of Moloch’s monstrous acolytes, similar to the one we encountered in the tunnels while attempting to hold the Horseman prisoner—before I had learned of his true identity. Henry Parish was wounded by one, but insists he is well, and indeed demonstrates what must be a superhuman power of healing. Already the marks of the creature’s claws are beginning to disappear from his arm. The only other being I have seen exhibit such healing is the Horseman; the powers possessed by a Sin Eater are greater than I would have suspected.
Abigail has strong misgivings about finding the map. She has raised the possibility that the reason for the protective hex on Knapp’s prayer beads was that sometime after General Washington’s (final) death, Knapp realized a new danger and took steps to prevent anyone from finding the map.
Abigail drives, and I write. (Aside: I believe she wants me to learn to drive, but it is difficult to know how serious she is, since her alternate proposal is, and I quote, “Or at least we could get you a horse and buggy so I don’t have to chauffeur you around everywhere.”) We are going to explore the islands of the Hudson. Another of Henry Parish’s hard-won revelations sticks in the front of my mind: It was also the Reverend Knapp who conveyed Washington’s Bible to Katrina so she could place it with my comatose body in the cave. I had suspected this but hesitated to believe it, because if he knew of the location of my body, that meant he protected that secret—and perhaps that was another reason for the Horseman to hunt him down. I am beginning to stagger under the weight of the lives lost to further our cause, and defend my life.
Also, if he feared the discovery of the map, why did he not return and remove it from the cave? There is a mystery here—another mystery, I should say—and we have not the clues to unravel it. My belief is that the hex on the beads was there to ward off Moloch and his minions. Why it should have so damaged Henry Parish is a puzzle that none of us understands.
Now is the time to cross a river. Surely General Washington would appreciate this symmetry. On Christmas night of 1776, he famously crossed the Delaware to raid a Hessian encampment at Tr
enton. Now we seek to raid his tomb to fight our Hessian enemies—some of whom, perhaps, were in Trenton when the Continentals took them by surprise? A good omen. Further, I am put in mind of both the proverbial crossing of Jordan and the mythological crossing of the Styx. In that context it seems quite fitting that we undertake this crossing in search of a dead man with whom we are hoping to speak—not verbally, but by means of what we find in his tomb.
John 11: 41. Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid.
It was turning a stone that opened Washington’s tomb. It sat alone in a clearing on Bannerman’s Island, and bore the marks of human workmanship. For what purpose would a stone have been so placed? As a marker. Bannerman’s Island is aptly named, for are we all not bannermen of the host of heaven? And it was there that we discovered what we needed to know … and also where we began to confront the problems that accompany the possession of such a powerful item as a map to Purgatory.
On the shore of Bannerman’s Island, Abigail pried from Henry Parish the confirmation of what she had previously suspected: a prophecy from the Apocryphon of John, a book removed from the biblical canon in the early centuries after the Crucifixion. This prophecy states that the two Witnesses would turn on each other when the Beast, surely Moloch, “rose from the Abyss,” which just as surely refers to Moloch rising from Purgatory to oversee the final battle of the Apocalypse. She was quite skeptical of my assurances that we would treat the map as the immensely powerful and dangerous artifact it is. Before the tension between us could grow unmanageable I located the entrance to Washington’s tomb and we entered. Was this another decoy? No, as the inscription IM—for Indispensable Man, a common moniker applied to Washington during the Revolution and thereafter—confirmed. We searched the crypt for the coffin that must surely be within, and found it by means of a secret keyhole in a statue of the Roman statesman Cincinnatus, grooved to match the Masonic ring I have worn since 1771.
CINCINNATUS
A leader in crisis, who yielded power the moment the crisis was past, and could not be persuaded to keep it for its own sake. He was notified that he had been nominated as dictator of Rome while he was plowing his field—a mere fifteen days later, after putting down the rebellion of the Aequians, he had resigned and was back at his plow. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, then Cincinnatus was truly an incorruptible man. Washington admired him. (The American city named for him, Cincinnati, was apparently known for its trade in pigs, and for hosting the first professional baseball team.)
It was too easy at that point. We had the map in our possession, and Katrina’s freedom was within our grasp. That was when Brooks, newly strengthened and utterly in the thrall of Moloch, collapsed the entrance to the crypt and attacked. It was only through the quick reaction of Henry Parish, who seized Brooks and consumed his sins, that he was prevented from killing us all—and even so, Parish’s brave act only sufficed to give Abigail time to strike Brooks down with the pry bar we had brought to open Washington’s coffin. I have never had to kill one who loved me, and by the grace of the Infinite (to use the preferred term of the deist) I never shall. I am filled with admiration that Abigail had the strength to act when to do otherwise would have doomed us all.
All Masonic structures are ideas given form in stone. Perhaps this is true of all structures—architects doubtless would say so—but it is an inherent feature of the works of Freemasons, and it was knowledge of this that saved our lives earlier today. For when Brooks revived—having already died, he could not be incapacitated for long by any physical means—we were able to trigger the crypt’s lethal defenses, bringing its massive ceiling and pillars down on him while we made good our escape. We left not by the way we had come, for Brooks had sealed that entrance beyond our capability to excavate, but through the rear wall of the crypt’s innermost sanctum. I knew there would be an exit therein, for it is another dictum of Masonic architecture that no structure of any importance be without a secret egress. Freemasons are ever conscious of the presence of their enemies.
Then came a difficult moment between Abigail and me. She knew Moloch needed the map to win the war, for without it he cannot prevent an incursion into Purgatory. That is his weakness. If we can strike into Purgatory, we can recover Katrina and thereby remove the hold Moloch maintains over the Horseman, Van Brunt. Abigail spoke of something else Brooks had said in addition to this, however: that the map also holds a secret that is key, not to the defense of Purgatory but to Moloch’s strategy to prosecute and win his war against heaven. I know not what that secret may be; none of us does. But its existence terrified Abigail, as did her lingering fear of the prophecy that the two Witnesses will betray each other. She was utterly convinced that the map was the key to Moloch’s victory—and could I place more importance on rescuing Katrina than on the very end of the world?
I could not.
I burned the map. It was the only way to halt that prophecy’s self-fulfilling momentum and keep the trust Abigail and I have with each other, without which we have no hope. Abigail was becoming controlled by fear of this prophecy, and I by fear of her reaction to it. In the end it is the same fear, that we will not make our own decisions in the face of what seems such a powerful destiny. Moloch will not have the map. Abigail’s concerns are somewhat assuaged.
I am alone again. Henry Parish has gone home. Abigail as well. Of Jennifer’s whereabouts I know nothing, as usual.
Captain Irving is a better and stronger man than I had understood. He is attempting to shoulder the blame for a number of the deaths that have recently occurred. By doing so he protects his daughter, who remembers nothing of her possession by Ancitif. She would be shattered were she confronted with the knowledge that it was her hands (though Ancitif’s will) that killed Father Boland and endangered her mother. This is not an especially heroic act in and of itself, for what father would not interpose himself between a daughter and the misguided force of the law? Irving’s heroism is in his further duplicity, which encompasses several other deaths. He draws attention to himself as a suspect and thereby frees Abigail and me to continue our work. Before long we will be forced to do something to protect him, but for now he is insulated—by his status and the loyalty officers of the constabulary command from one another—from the full consequences of his confession.
I occupy myself thinking of Katrina’s necklace, the same one I selected on Van Brunt’s behalf shortly before the disastrous end of his engagement to her. What became of it during the confrontation with Van Brunt in the tunnels I do not know, yet its memory is a talisman to me—of the promise I have made to help her escape, and of the dread menace of Moloch that stands between Katrina and me.
I have a decision to make.
Abigail quoted the example of Cincinnatus, after seeing the sculpture of him in Washington’s tomb. Indeed he provided a worthy template for how one must behave when in possession of power—that is, one must relinquish it the moment it is no longer necessary. Washington was emulating Cincinnatus when he rejected all pleas to continue as president, or even assume a more imperial role, and in this as in so many other things, Washington was the very model of good conduct. The memory of Cincinnatus was behind Abigail’s insistence that we destroy the map. Of that I am certain. Perhaps it was too powerful to possess, and its true value lay in the damage we could do to Moloch’s cause by destroying it. A saying popular in this time: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I reject it, although I understand its allure. I prefer a more recent saying, also familiar though regarded with less seriousness due to its source (and here I speak not of my impish contemporary Voltaire, but of a television figure, both spider and man, whom I encountered recently): With great power comes great responsibility.
A few weeks ago, while under the sway of my melancholy at being torn away from my time and all I knew—in short, feeling quite sorry for myself—I attempted to discover what the great men of my time had accomplished during the years remaining to them after my inte
rment. In light of recent events regarding General Washington, I am put in mind of correspondence between Benjamin Franklin and the eminent French scientist Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg. The two took up the question of whether it might in some future age be possible to lay the dead aside and awaken them by means of science, after careful preservation.
I wish it were possible … to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they might be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country! But … in all probability, we live in a century too little advanced, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought in our time to its perfection …
’Twas not a cask of Madeira, but a mighty enchantment, that worked my long sleep and eventual revival—but I can appreciate the coincidence that Franklin speculated on this while events gathered themselves to hurtle toward the 232-year hiatus of my waking life. O, Franklin, most irritating yet clairvoyant of men—is there nothing you did not contemplate, or anticipate?
I was brought back to life for a reason.
Katrina, Katrina … I have seen the map. I know the way and will redraw it. Hold on a little longer.
[January 20]
There is to be an eclipse today. I believe I will go for a walk before the sun disappears, and collect my thoughts before meeting Abigail and plotting the next act in our war against Moloch. I hope she is bearing up well, as this is the anniversary of her encounter with him. I suspect he will have a commemoration planned. We must be vigilant.
