I have just returned from a visit to what is known as an elementary school. As part of my “cover,” Abigail has suggested I perform “outreach”—in other words, pretend to be a professor and speak to schools. This little masquerade is designed to allay the suspicions of some of Abigail’s colleagues, who persist in viewing me as a suspect (“person of interest”—what a milquetoast phrase!) in the murders of not only Sheriff Corbin but everyone else who has run afoul of the Horseman and his minions.
The classrooms I visited are quite different from those in the schools I attended. They are brightly decorated, welcoming spaces, and the children are free within reason to move about and to speak. When I was eight years of age, we sat silently on benches and copied lessons, regurgitating them on command. I learned, oh yes, but it was only by some small miracle that I ever acquired any love of learning.
What a delight these modern schools turned out to be! The children were subject to many of the same errors and mythological understandings of their history that I noted on my first visit to the local historical society, but their eagerness and openness was a joy to me. I had continually to remind myself not to tell them too much of the truth—but is that not what all adults must consider in any conversation with a child too young to know of the world’s darker truths?
These are the souls I most resolutely fight for. They deserve a world absent the dire threat of Moloch, and I will give that to them. They are sticky and noisy and unruly, and I love them without reservation.
Further notes on Moloch. Known to the ancients as a sun god—but not the life-giving sort akin to Ra. His were the sun’s powers to sap the strength of men and kill them when they could not shelter from it. He was known as “prince of the valley of tears,” after the location of his shrine in Tophet. The Greeks believed him an aspect of Cronus, who devoured his children—Moloch has power over time, perhaps? Is that another reason why he has taken an interest in me—my sojourn beyond the normal lifespan of a man? Medieval demonology held him to be especially pleased by the lamentations of mothers at the deaths of their children; it was also said that he was at his most powerful in autumn—the time when all things begin to die. Moloch steals children. He is always represented as having the head of a bull, or a bull calf.
I wonder, as I wander through this new age, what it might mean that demons are so much more easily encountered, their works so much more easily discerned, than those of angels. Does the tide of the battle between heaven and hell turn? Or have the angelic hosts chosen a path of action invisible to humans on Earth? If these first weeks reawakened from my long slumber have taught me nothing else, it is that one chooses either faith or despair. Because I have doubt, I am able to choose faith. The man who chooses despair rejects both doubt and faith.
Those around me—Abigail most prominently, but also Captain Irving, Jennifer, Henry Parish, even the Freemasons—they teach me. From them I choose to learn.
And now it has gotten quite late. One can only fight so much evil in one day. Before I sleep, I believe I will take another of those incredible hot showers. Abigail has suggested I might feel more at home in this time if I dressed as others do. This step I am not yet prepared to take. My skin is too accustomed to the touch of homespun and rough wool. I confess I look askance at the idea that so many of the garments now worn were created of materials called polyester and acrylic. These are apparently derived from plastic, which has become a noun in this time. I knew it previously only as an adjective describing an object without fixed shape or properties. The language goes on living, even when the speaker is magically asleep for two centuries and more.
This question of plastic is a complex one, apparently. I look around this cabin and see it everywhere. There are plastic containers of every shape, transparent or translucent or dyed with any color one might imagine. There are plastic bags for storage of food items, going by the moniker Ziploc—and where has the K gone from that name? “Branding,” it seems, according to Abbie. One of the functions of this activity known as branding is the destruction of words in order that they may be formed into slogans. This age views language with deep suspicion and words as things that may be mutilated for the purpose of commerce. I am, it seems, quite old-fashioned by virtue of my habits of speech and writing—at least as much as by my dress.
Where my dress is concerned, I will continue as I have thus far. Soap and water are as much a wonder as the Internet or Ziploc bags. (“Baggies” they are called sometimes, following a strange tendency in this age to apply diminutives to everything. Mystifying.) Why would I fill a closet with clothing I do not want, when I keep my own clothes clean and they suit my preferences? A man can only bend so much to the winds of fashion.