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 the 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.
Knowing this danger, Seamus assented. He brought us to a ritual hut and outlined for us what we must do. Defeating Ro’kenhrontyes was only possible by entering his realm and facing the challenge he placed before us. To achieve the penetration of his realm, known to the Mohawk as the Valley of Death, one must be put in a state of waking dream through ritual means. Seamus’s version of this ritual incorporated blue jasmine tea and scorpions. I confess to some discomfort at the specter of the scorpion’s sting, which I had never experienced but understood to be quite painful. However, the intensity of its sting was matched by the clarity of the vision it provided in conjunction with the tea, which he had altered with other shamanic ingredients unknown to me.
Ro’kenhrontyes kills by forcing his victims to confront endlessly the errors they made that caused pain to their fellow creatures. His Valley of Death is the passage all souls must take from this world to the afterlife, whether it be with the angels or with the infernal hordes. He may not touch those committed to one path or the other; it is those whose fates still hang in the balance who become his prey. When Abigail and I awoke in the Valley of Death, we were separated. Ro’kenhrontyes challenged her by forcing her to face what she had done by lying about her experience seeing the demon. I tried to intervene but was unable to thwart the Sandman until Abigail, displaying a reservoir of courage I suspected must be present in her as it is in her sister, at last admitted her sin and the damage it had caused her sister. In an instant Ro’kenhrontyes froze in a crystalline form and Abigail smashed him to fragments. In doing so, she also saved my life, for the demon’s strength had overmastered mine, and I was drowning in sand. Is drowning correct? Suffocating, perhaps. I have never been an habitué of beaches and after this experience am even less inclined to become one.
We emerged from the Valley of Death. The forces of evil, if I may be permitted so melodramatic a phrase, are gathering to oppose the work of the Two Witnesses: Abigail Mills and me. The Hessian, Serilda, now the Sandman of the Mohawk … what monstrosity shall we confront next?
Today’s events have reminded me of a man called Louis Atayataronghta. He and I fought together at the Battle of Oriskany, the most bloody of all the fighting I saw during the course of the war for the future of the American colonies. At this time the Six Nations of the Iroquois were wavering between loyalty to the Crown and allegiance to the colonies. After Oriskany, they would fall into a civil war; before Oriskany, the Oneida were on the colonists’ side, the Mohawk divided, and the other tribes tending toward the British side. At Oriskany many Mohawks fought with the British, who ambushed a relief column making for Fort Stanwix. It was a terrible slaughter. Louis, one of the few Mohawks who fought for the colonial forces that day, saved my life.
Given the elaborate operation involved in firing a musket in 1776, even the fastest of men could not reload in less than fifteen seconds, and most could only accomplish it in twenty or more. During that pause, when a soldier was occupied with the business of tearing open cartridges of powder and so forth, he was vulnerable to attack. The Indians fighting with the British soon learned that once a soldier fired, if he could be engaged at arm’s length before reloading his musket, he was no match for a skilled wielder of a tomahawk or spear. A great many of the colonists met their end in this way during the engagement at Oriskany—I would have joined them had it not been for the quick reflexes of Louis, who saw a Mohawk moving to take me as I fumbled whilst reloading.
I was at Oriskany with the relief column because General Washington had sent me. Why, I did not know at the time—although now, with the advantage of hindsight and the revelations contained in his Bible, I suspect something supernatural was afoot. All I knew then was that I was accompanying a column sent in relief to the commander of the besieged fort, Colonel Peter Gansevoort.
Needing to catch up with the caravan, which had left some days before, I sought Louis’s knowledge of the terrain to make up time and join the resupply effort before it arrived. As events transpired, we had just made contact with the relief effort’s commander, Nicholas Herkimer, when the British and their Iroquois allies attacked. The ambush resulted in the loss of the artifact to the British—but only temporarily, as shortly thereafter I and a small group of rebels sallied out from the fort under cover of darkness and sacked the British encampment. We burned their supplies and escaped, recovering the artifact, which Colonel Gansevoort then carried to Fort Saratoga when the siege was lifted.
I saw a great many men die during those days. For miles around, one could stumble across the bodies of those fallen in the battle, as skirmishes spread through the entirety of the valley. My lasting impression of Oriskany, however, is the lightning quickness of Louis Atayataronghta, striking seemingly out of nowhere to bury his tomahawk in the head of a fellow Mohawk who was about to strike me down. I know not what became of him after the war.
Two other developments of note:
One is that Captain Irving continues to walk his narrow path between permitting us to work and keeping the knowledge of our work from those who would not be so sympathetic. He suggested—in a tone that I took to mean a polite command—that we commence using the archives as our base of operations, to keep us out of sight of the rest of the constabulary and those who monitor them. We agreed, happily on my part.
Second: I spoke with Abigail’s sister, Jennifer, who agreed to see me despite her refusal of a visit from her own sister. There is genuine steel in that young woman, forged and tempered by her experience. From the files kept by Sheriff Corbin I was able to extract a less-than-diligent assessment of her condition, conducted on the occasion of one of her multiple confinements in a mental institution. Apparently she was freed on several occasions for a short period of time, and incarcerated again each time, the last for the theft of survival equipment. She believes in the approach of the End of Days and did not flinch when I broached the topic, or when I revealed to her that the Horsemen were soon to ride. She is angry and suspicious, rightfully so—but when I asked her for aid in our struggle, she did not refuse. I write this now because after our battle with Ro’kenhrontyes, Abigail rode her newfound wave of courage to the asylum in Tarrytown, and found that Jennifer had escaped.