by Irvine, Alex
SUPERSTITIONS REGARDING ECLIPSES
Eclipse, from Greek ἔκλειψις, “abandonment”—one certainly hopes that there will be no literal abandonment today!
Often held to be an omen of the coming death of a leader—or earthquake
Chinese: Dragon (or dog) eating the sun
Indian: Immerse oneself in water for protection—akin to baptism?
Muslim: Special eclipse prayer, Salaat ul-Kusoof
Mayan, Aztec: Causes birth defects; pregnant women must wear something red and protect themselves with an arrowhead
Aleut: Place all cooking and eating utensils upside down
This day, which began in such a delightful fashion, is rapidly disintegrating into chaos. But what else would one expect from a war for the souls of humanity?
And also—this morning as I walked in the forest, I encountered a woman dressed in clothing from the century of my birth. At first I took her to be Katrina, and believed myself to be in the grip of a vision of some sort. Upon further investigation, however, I learned that I had in fact come upon a reenactment (full of inaccuracies, but sincerely meant) of the battle between the Marquis de Montcalm’s mercenaries and the Forty-second Highlanders. Of all the leisure pursuits one might enjoy … yet I must not judge. The woman I at first mistook for my wife was in fact a seamstress specializing in the creation of antique clothing for people whose hobby it is to put on masquerades of historical events. I will refrain from further comment on this practice, save to say that I am quite thrilled to have been able to purchase an entire wardrobe of new clothing.
Things, as I have heard others say, seemed to be looking up … until I was interrupted in my conversation with the lovely reenactor (I almost told her that I once romanced another seamstress, Betsy Ross, but bit my tongue before I could do something so foolish) by a call from Henry Parish. He arrived shortly after I returned to Corbin’s cabin to find Abigail and Jennifer already there. Abigail bore the news that Captain Irving had signed a confession to the murders of Officer Jones and Father Boland. O brave dissembler! We must find a way to save him from his attempt to save us.
Henry, for his part, has had a premonition of Moloch in the forest against a background of four unnatural white trees. Abigail and Jennifer immediately recognized this as a feature of their encounter with the demon years ago. Continuing, Henry recounted the rest of the vision: a rider on a horse whose flesh was burned but not consumed, brandishing a sword.
Revelation 6:4. And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
The Horseman of War.
Today is the day he is to be raised into this world, via the breaking of the second seal.
Abigail has gone to the precinct office to see if she might speak to Irving, who is not answering his phone. Astonishing what a transgression this has become, to refuse to be available to anyone at any moment. I am grateful to escape into this journal, and be alone with my thoughts, though it mean rudeness to Henry and Jennifer, both of whom would draw me back out into their plan. We are to meet Abigail at the archive.
I have confessed to copying the map.
Abigail, to her credit, was angry but understood that my weakness has been converted by recent events into a strength. For we now know that Henry Parish’s vision of the four trees marks the spot where Moloch will engineer the entry of the Second Horseman into this realm. The only way to prevent this is to magically shield that location, blocking the Horseman’s emergence—and the only person we know who is capable of creating such a shield is Katrina. Therefore my reproduction of the map—a minor and necessary treachery—will be key to our survival. The Horseman of War rides up from the infernal dimensions, and we are charged to stop him. So we must.
I recalled to Abigail and the others what General Washington said to me: The battle for this world would be won or lost in a township that took its name from the hallowed ground on which it lay, a doorway between worlds.
Sleepy Hollow. The name is a corruption of the original, which meant to convey that this was the hallowed place where evil sleeps, and those dedicated to the light stand watch.
One must note here that Sleepy Hollow’s current population is 144,000 souls—exactly the number to be saved according to the Doctrine of Election. This is the number of the saved in the seventh chapter of Revelation, and it is held to be the number of souls who bear the mark of Grace and will stave off the victory of evil during the Tribulation. This similarity can be no accident. It is yet one more symbolic indicator of the crux at which the battle between light and dark has arrived. The Tribulation is upon us.
The map features a number of ley lines, some of which I did not recognize as such until I understood the peculiar key of Washington’s undead cartography. (I feel certain that no man before me has ever written those three words in sequence.) These are lines of occult energy, tracking certain wellsprings and currents of power inherent in Earth itself. Their use is common in magical practices across the world. But where were these ley lines to be placed on a map? Sleepy Hollow, without a doubt, but where? I regarded maps of the town, and conjured a map of how it had appeared in 1781; I returned my attention to General Washington’s map; and yes! There it was. I could see where Washington had marked out a particular bend in the river; how the suggestion of barrows on Washington’s map appeared on the contemporary map too, as dogleg turns in roads where there appeared no reason for them.
The ley lines on the map intersect in a location deep in the forest on the edge of town—that is the portal to Purgatory.
Moloch’s riddle still troubles me, however. The saint’s name is a sign. When you know my meaning, War will take form.
This would seem to suggest that we should not learn the saint’s name. Yet that cannot be the case, because if Moloch needed us to know the saint’s name for War to arrive, he could simply tell us. Therefore we reason that this part of the riddle is at least as much threat as prophecy; that Moloch believes we will learn the name too late to prevent the profane annunciation of the Horseman of War.
Abigail has set Jennifer the task of listening to Sheriff Corbin’s recordings, hundreds of hours of his musings and investigations as he sought to understand the arcane forces animating the history of Sleepy Hollow. She is a dogged and careful person, and I have no doubt she will find the answer if it is there.
For my part, I have found the doorway between worlds of which General Washington spoke, and now is the time to use it.
I must go into Purgatory and bring out my beloved. I will not be going alone; Abigail will be with me. (I told her of the meaning of the word eclipse and she—plucky, brave Abigail!—countered with, “Nobody abandons anyone today. That’s for damn sure.”) We two Witnesses will traverse the portal between this world and Purgatory. The incantation, inscribed at the edge of Washington’s map, is beautiful in its simplicity:
We, the penitent, with humble heart upon this threshold do summon thee: in mirror’d form appear, a gateway to the world between worlds.
Purgatory. Entry is forbidden, and it tests those who come not by the road of death; to eat or drink of anything that is offered is to surrender one’s soul in perpetuity. To forget the illusionary nature of the world presented—for nothing in Purgatory is real—is to become an illusion oneself, trapped behind the mirror until the end of time.
It is a bold move indeed, to go into such a place willingly. But what manner of soldier would I be were I not willing to risk my own life in the effort to preserve so many others? Apart from that, there is no death I would not face if it meant bringing Katrina out of Purgatory and into the light again. She is indispensable to our cause, for one; only she can work the enchantment to seal the portal against the coming of the second Horseman. Yet beyond that she is my wife, my beloved, mother of the son I shall never know—and if men of good heart will not face the horrors of hell for those th
ey love, then love itself is doomed.
Like Orpheus I will descend, but my Eurydice will not look back.
These will not, I hope, be words of farewell to this journal—to which I have become quite attached—but the possibility must be acknowledged, since to enter Purgatory is to put oneself at the mercy of Moloch. That will be slim mercy indeed.
If I do not survive these next hours, someone else must continue the work we have begun. This journal will assist that person, I hope, whether it be Abigail, Henry Parish, or another party whose role in this shadowy war is yet to be revealed—although I hope much more fervently that I will return to this world, with Katrina, and have no need of a successor! A word to whoever might read this: Know that you might be called upon to perform great deeds. Know also that you need not be great beforehand to do so, for no hero began a hero, and all of us are proven by our actions.
Here endeth the advice. Time is short, and so will I be. I will write to calm myself a little, and clarify my thinking. Abigail too is preparing, and Henry; each of us, I think, is grateful for a private moment before we embark on an action of so fraught and uncertain an outcome.
Katrina. I would think only of you, but I also am thinking of the prophecy regarding Witnesses: that one of us will turn on the other and both will thereby perish. I am sure Abigail is thinking of it too. Not all prophecies must necessarily come true, for prophets are human and prone to the same errors as any other—yet I have seen enough in these past weeks to understand that there is an inspiration beyond the world of the senses. I fear that the words of the Apocryphon of John may yet come to bear. I would walk through the fires of hell itself to bring Katrina back, but surely Moloch knows of the prophecy of the Witnesses as well. He will seek to turn us against each other, for dividing friends is one of evil’s surest methods for corrupting and destroying the good in humankind—“that they should kill one another.” Abigail and I must be vigilant. What a pitiable circumstance, to be forced to think of one’s closest ally as potentially one’s mortal enemy.
I have, as they say in this age, been there before. With Abraham Van Brunt, certainly. Then, however, I had fewer allies in whom I felt complete trust. Now I have at least three: Abigail herself, Miss Jenny, and Henry Parish. Together we will find a way to confront Moloch, to force our way through the rigors and perils of Purgatory, and prevent the advent of the Horseman of War. Particularly I place my trust in Abigail, for in truth I am not the worthiest of the two Witnesses, but only the one who benefits from the exemplary actions of the other.
These past weeks would surely have been a descent into madness without the steadying presence of Abigail. I marvel at her equanimity, her loyalty, and—not least—her wit, which has done so much to keep the shock of this future from overwhelming me. They thought me fit for the asylum at first, and so I might have been, had she not made efforts to keep me on an even keel. Every man who falls into a magical slumber for two centuries and more should be so fortunate as to have a Lieutenant Abigail Mills awaiting him when he awakens. I could not have hoped for a better companion and fellow Witness. Abigail, if I do not return from Purgatory, and if you read these pages, know that I hold you in the highest esteem and that my affection and respect for you are boundless. I hope you teach me how to operate an automobile someday—but I fear your efforts to force me into contemporary dress were always doomed to fail.
Still, my mind returns to the 232 years that have passed since I saw my wife in this mortal realm. Only when I think about that amount of time do I feel the centuries, and it is still difficult to believe so much time has elapsed, rather than only a matter of several weeks—less, in fact, than some of our other separations, when I was on missions to the southern colonies, or once to Paris. More properly, it was Passy, as I have mentioned, the second time I met that gasbag Benjamin Franklin. In the six years Katrina and I were married, we spent perhaps a total of two years apart. That was not unusual then, when travel was so much more difficult—not for nothing did it develop from the same root as the word travail. Now … perhaps now we never need be apart again. Perhaps we shall live together in the twenty-first century as we intended to after Independence in the eighteenth. Then, we imagined what the year 1800 might bring … now?
What will she look like outside of Purgatory? I look exactly as I did in 1781, and there are a great many more mirrors here than there were then, so it is easy to keep minute track of one’s physical appearance. An age of vanities, this one is.
One must be able to joke, even at moments most fraught and dangerous. Life is marvelous, and grand, and the moment one loses sight of this central truth, one has taken the perilous step into the shadow of despair … and that is exactly what Moloch desires. Martin Luther was legendary for breaking wind at the devil: “But I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away.” Inspired by this example, I mock the devil’s minions. Then, bolstered by laughter and comradely feeling, I kill them.
We are almost ready to enter Purgatory, and I must put this journal down. I look forward to picking it up again, and committing to words the experience of feeling my wife’s hand in mine. I am resolute, yet I also confess to a creeping fear that another shoe is yet to drop. (This is another superb expression with which I have recently become acquainted.) For does apocalypse not mean a revealing, an unmasking of a truth heretofore unimagined—and perhaps unimaginable?
What truth could that be?
Henry is watching me, with a peculiar expression on his face. I believe he is more concerned than he would like to admit about the prospects of our attempt to penetrate Purgatory and liberate Katrina. I will not ask; he is entitled to keep his thoughts to himself, and I certainly need no more trepidation added to that which I already feel. Henry did not seem an emotional man during our first interactions, but unless I am badly misreading his face, he is feeling some manner of profound emotion. I cannot tell what; other than joy, emotions intensely felt are often indistinguishable to me.
Virtually everyone I have met since reawakening here in Sleepy Hollow has had a role to play in this first part of the war against Moloch. Now that we are about to strike our first decisive blow, I have a moment to think, and I return to an idea that has often recurred over these past weeks. If coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous, He has surely signed His name to the events of these past weeks.
All of it rushes together in my mind. Awakening, the first automobile I saw (and very nearly the last, as it almost ran me down); meeting Abigail and beginning to understand the truly incomprehensible nature of what had happened—yes, one can understand that something is incomprehensible; in fact, one must if one is not to beat one’s head against the wall mistaking it for a problem that can be solved. The creatures, one after another, converging on Sleepy Hollow as if they could sense the great magic and the great evil being mustered here. The piecemeal development of my intuition of Moloch’s involvement, and the simultaneous discovery of Katrina’s true nature and her plight. On and on! So much in a few weeks! And now we stand on the threshold of forcing back a dread enemy, and crippling our greatest adversary just when he thought victory at hand.
These are strange times indeed. Plastic and satellites and water bottles and NorthStar and women in trousers; machines to make coffee; telephones that speak; telephones! The language, faster and more aggressive than in my day. Strange times.
This is where the battle turns.
May the grace of the Almighty guide us. More anon.
I must also leave these pencil shadings of two scraps of paper I recently found in the binding of an edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack. The book was among Sheriff Corbin’s materials, in a file on Reverend Knapp, but I had not taken notice of it until recently. I paged through it, at times struck by Franklin’s homespun wisdom and at other times barely able to restrain my irritation at his arrogance.
In any event, I discovered these scraps and noted that when held at an angle to the light, they manifested the impressions of letters.
I found a pencil and shaded over the impressions, ever so lightly, and thus revealed:
Either these shadings are nonsense, or more so-called Vigenère ciphers.
Given the Freemasons’ love of these codes, I suspect the key is CICERO but have not had time to work through the decryption. Abigail calls. Will return to these soon.
About the Author
Alex Irvine is the author of twenty-nine books, including the International Horror Guild, Locus, and Crawford Award–winning A Scattering of Jades, as well as the acclaimed near-future thriller Buyout and tie-in titles with Supernatural, Transformers, Tintin, Pacific Rim, and Marvel Comics (Hellstorm, Son of Satan; Daredevil Noir; Iron Man: Rapture). He holds a Ph.D. in English and was an English professor at the University of Maine for six years.
