Abigail has brought me clothing. We were to go shopping together, but at the last moment I demurred, unable to face the throngs at the immense marketplace known as a “shopping mall.” I require solace, being of a scholarly nature and more suited, I fear, to the company of books than of my fellow humans. She is regarding me now with ill-disguised impatience as I scribble this down rather than greeting her and rousing myself to try the fit of the clothing she has purchased.
I will be frank. I despise the fashions of this age. I look around me and it seems that in 2013, one may dress according to one’s whims. Suits of clothes are side by side with shirts bearing hideous slogans and designs. Short pants are common among adults, which is an innovation I might have found quite welcome in the sweltering climes of Georgia—yet it seems quite out of place here in New York, where the temperatures are cool enough to make short pants seem immodest.
Even trousers are worn in various ways: cinched at the hips by a belt, hitched up to the waist, even left to sag down to mid-buttock; incredibly these last attract no attention from police despite their flagrant transgression against common decency. The dress of women is form-fitting to a degree that would have paralyzed any man of the eighteenth century, and I will say no more lest that track of thought lead me to impure thoughts. Also, I despise zippers.
The fault, however, is not in the fashions, for they have faded throughout the ages, and no particular moment is responsible for the foolishness of its dress; no, the fault lies in me, for I have come to clutch at my difference as an act of self-preservation. My clothing, which survived battles and army encampments—not to mention two centuries and more lying in a cave—has become dear to me. I have always resisted imbuing physical objects with emotional significance; however the impulse is nigh impossible to resist when all that ties me to my former life is my clothing. I am, it seems, not quite prepared to admit that I live in this future—though to deny it of course is rank idiocy.
Abigail has begun to tap her foot. That is a signal whose meaning has survived the centuries. I must put down my pen and adorn myself with the raiment of 2013. Trepidation, thy name is new clothing.
These damnable clothes. How did I let Abigail beguile me into changing from the dress that suits me into these outlandish garments? I can scarcely move. Tight-fitting breeches were the style in 1781, and apparently again in this time—but this denim fabric clutches at me in a way that wool never did. Perhaps I shall grow accustomed to it, or perhaps I will stake out the territory of the unfashionable for myself; I am no fop, and never was.
I have heard of very few instances in which a demon could migrate at will from one body to another. Demonic possession typically is ended in one of two ways. Either the demon abandons its host or it is exorcised. While thinking of the Devil’s Trap some days ago, I copied down an exorcism ritual. There are a number of them, each with its own partisans and its own efficacies in certain situations. Here is one I saw copied into a document once folded into General Washington’s Bible.
And while we have come to rest on the topic of Washington’s Bible, I believe I shall be forced to remove it from my preferred location, inside one of Sheriff Corbin’s heavy locking file cabinets. Captain Irving came to the archive and spoke to us of a demon he suspects is in Sleepy Hollow, flitting from person to person and leaving each of its former hosts with no memory of its possession. He previously saw it in Manhattan, where it threatened his daughter … and now it apparently has designs on Washington’s Bible. I am reading through it again, studying the profuse marginalia. Its pages give off the faint but unmistakable odor of rot.
Abigail has located a thick sheaf of records and documents related to possession. Sheriff Corbin’s research interests were both broad and deep. I should have very much liked to have met him. Among these documents on possession is a dossier recounting his apprehension of a woman taken over by a demon with the ability to leap from body to body, leaving each previous vessel with no memory of what had transpired during his or her possession. We studied this record and located a videocassette of Corbin’s interview with the young woman in question. On the video, Corbin gave particulars of the case and then turned the camera on the subject of the possession, who was none other than Jennifer Mills.
FROM THE DESK OF
SHERIFF AUGUST CORBIN
POSSESSION
Oldest known references come from Sumer. Very rarely attested in the Old Testament; much more frequent in Gospels and Acts. Jesus casts out demons, is accused of being possessed. Why so much more common? Unknown. Known in most cultures and religions—Koran, Surah al-Baqarah 2:275.
Typical symptoms: Increased strength. Rage and aversion to symbols holy to the local culture. Knowledge of things the person could not know—including languages—sometimes speaking in tongues.
Most shamanic cultures have rituals in place to expel demons. Physical intervention also common. Some of the earliest medical procedures known to history were performed to exorcise a spirit. Trepanation, drilling holes in the skull to release pressure, was common for centuries—believed to create a way for demons to escape. Another practice: Force nauseating drinks on the possessed, to disgust the demon. In some cultures people who survived dangerous illness changed their names, so the demon that caused the illness wouldn’t be able to find them again. Variation: some cultures call sick or possessed people by ugly or hateful names to force the demon to leave. Then the person’s true name is used again.
Often, exorcised demons are sent back to the plane/dimension/realm of their origin. At times they are destroyed. On rare occasions it’s attested that they were imprisoned in another form—most famously with Jesus and the pigs, Matthew 8, Mark 5, Luke 8.
Religious hucksters typically claim that addicts, mentally ill people, etc., are possessed by demons. I’ve seen real demonic possession and it’s got nothing to do with your other personal problems. If a demon rides you, it’s because that demon wants you. Example: Wendigo curse.
Sage, cedar, camphor, other herbs commonly make up part of exorcism rituals. Also, salt. Demons can be expelled sometimes by forcing the possessed person to drink salt water: both nauseating and anti-demon because of the salt itself.
SNEEZING. Often held to be a sign of possession, or that demons are near. Not sure if there’s anything to it, otherwise you’d have to believe there are a lot of demons around during allergy season. (Allergies as demonic possession? People with bad hay fever probably believe it.)
YAWNING. Also said to be a sign that demons are near, and forcing the mouth open to enter. Various practices have developed to fight this—some Hindus crack their knuckles after yawning to frighten away the encroaching spirit.
~
Recent CASE: V. rare to see demons transferring bodies but I’ve observed it with this young woman. Have been unable to make an exorcism stick—also have no idea where the demon goes when it is not riding her. The subject has no memory of possession between incidents but is aware they are happening. Tough kid. See attached video recording. Possible to perform an exorcism over a wide area, to force demon to abandon body-jumping? Unknown. More research required. She needs help and I’m not sure I can give it to her.
What a harrowing experience possession must be. I pray I never experience it. Miss Jenny refused at first to view the tape, although she knew of the incident; she had no memory of her possession—as Corbin stated in the file—and she had no desire to be reminded of it. Abigail convinced her only by confronting her with the potential danger to Captain Irving’s Macey—Miss Jenny has a soft spot, as the saying goes, for the young girl. I believe she sees some of her own strength of will in Macey, as do I.
She consented, and we viewed the next portion of the tape, wherein the demon possessing Jennifer spoke of the Horseman. It warned Corbin he would die by the Horseman’s hand—which was true—and that the Horseman would also kill Abigail. Then she suffered some sort of violent episode and the tape broke off, presumably because she damaged the recording equipment.
Watching with us in the archives, Jennifer withdrew into the stony silence that is her primary defense against unwanted facts. She refused to help; she could not help. Clearly she suffered from a deep sense of violation. She left, and we—Abigail, Irving, and I—considered what to do next. Irving left with his family for a safe house, where he was to meet a Father Boland, who had some experience with battling and exorcising demons. It was him Irving had gone to Manhattan to see a few days before.
I caught up with Jennifer before she could drive away and begged her to reconsider. Macey’s life was at stake, and perhaps the lives of others as well. Jennifer opened to me, ever so slightly, and admitted—in strictest confidence—that she had been subject to periodic episodes of possession ever since she and Abigail encountered Moloch in the forest when they were young girls. This revelation would have been disturbing enough, but Jennifer added to it a heartbreaking tale of self-sacrifice: The reason for her multiple incarcerations was her unshakable resolve to prevent the demons riding her from harming her sister. She caused herself to be imprisoned, over and over, to increase the probability that her possessions would occur while she was secured and away from Abigail.
Moved by this tale, I asked Jennifer yet again to aid us. We had learned all we could from Corbin’s files; only Jennifer herself could make us see what we were missing. She agreed to another viewing of the tape, and as I write we are playing it over and over, looking for the clue that must be there.
She found it! There was a passage in the recording where Jennifer falls into glossolalia—speaking in tongues—but we had an instinct that there might be a message in this apparent gibberish. By re-recording it and playing it backward—that most fundamental of codes, the reversal—the gibberish was revealed (due to my facility with languages) to be Aramaic. This is a favored language of demons due to its being the spoken language of most of the Jews of Galilee during the life of Christ, who himself spoke it. The demonic love of perversion extends to their use of the language spoken by the son of God—or, as Jefferson would have it, the rebellious rabbi who wielded his faith like a sword against the tyranny of the Romans. Either suits me.
Once I understood the language—and here Abigail rolled her eyes and said, “Of course you speak Aramaic”—I could hear that Jennifer was saying Ancitif cannot be defeated.
Ancitif. Once we puzzled out the syllables of that name, we tried various spellings in this omniscient index known as Google—and we located the story of the possession of the nuns of Louviers, more than three hundred years ago. A nunnery there came under the sway of lustful demons possessing the vicar and director. They beguiled the young nuns into a number of orgiastic practices—and, it is alleged, ritual murders as well—before one of the nuns was overburdened by her guilt and leveled accusations at the two men responsible. These, Vicar Thomas Boulle and director Mathurin Picard, were duly charged. The name of the demon said to have masterminded these actions was Ancitif. Picard died before the trial, under unknown (but, one suspects, unnatural) circumstances. Father Boulle met his end at the stake.
The nun, Sister Barbara, who broke Ancitif’s hold and made the accusations, was said to be freed by sacred lanterns from the cathedral adjacent to the nunnery. When I saw these lanterns, I recognized one of them! It was in Benjamin Franklin’s possession when I visited Franklin in his house at Passy, in France, in late 1778. I was there as a courier for General Washington, charged with returning certain documents to Washington. I remember the lantern well, and remembered too that Franklin had given one to a chosen delegate from each of the colonies. Jennifer broke into my reverie to announce that she too had seen one of them, and knew where we could procure it.
We are going to get that lantern now.
Much has happened. We did indeed collect one of the Louviers lanterns, from a family called Weaver that appears to be part of a lively subculture of apocalyptic maniacs in the United States of 2013. Colloquially they are known as “preppers,” for their obsessive focus on preparing for the End of Days—whether by nuclear means or demonic action, or simply through the (in their view) inevitable collapse of an immoral civilization. It was such a family, the Weavers, who possessed one of the sacred lanterns of Louviers. Apparently part of their “prepper” regimen includes the collecting of occult artifacts for use in whatever version of the end of the world they might encounter. Their house was a fortification as much as a dwelling place, ringed with traps and alarms; the Weavers themselves were as heavily armed as Abigail’s officers—perhaps more so—and all too willing to use their weapons. Oddly, it seems those most deeply invested in the idea of the end of the world are also those who yearn for a pretext to perpetrate violence.
I, who know the real dangers of the End of Days, feel quite differently about violence. I am no shirker of what is necessary, but neither am I given over to bloodthirstiness or latent sadism. I am a warrior, a Witness. People such as the Weavers mean well, perhaps, but their fear curdles their good intentions, and endangers us all.
Jennifer knew them, and had participated in paramilitary training with them, but that made no difference in their demeanor when they caught Abigail and me coming out of their compound with the Louviers lantern. Guns were drawn and leveled, and only Jennifer’s forceful presence allowed us to escape without bloodshed.
While we were thus occupied, however, the demon Ancitif was riding one of Captain Irving’s officers into the very safe house where Irving thought to protect his family. There it killed Father Boland and forced Irving to go to the archives and give it General Washington’s Bible. By the time we had disentangled ourselves from the Weavers, Irving and the demon-haunted Macey were already there. Had we not anticipated subterfuge on the part of the demon Ancitif, our cause might have been fatally set back—yet anticipate we had. I had removed the Bible from the archive ahead of time, and we also had enough time to prepare an ambush. I observed from a hiding place in the mouth of one of the tunnels leading away from the archive as Ancitif taunted Irving for his inability to keep his family safe. Irving bore this abuse, and further, he refused to tell Ancitif the locations of the Witnesses, information the demon desired most fervently. Little did Ancitif know that both Witnesses were within earshot at that moment, and preparing to announce themselves.
Miss Jenny once again was invaluable. She made herself a target of the demon’s attention, and with incredible force of will prevented Ancitif from possessing her once again. Her diversion saved the life of Macey’s mother, whom the demon was preparing to kill; once its attention was fully focused on its former host, we were able to maneuver it into an incomplete salt ring. As it raged, I leapt from my place of concealment and completed the ring, trapping the demon within. Repelled by the salt, which all demons hate, Ancitif could do naught but shower us with the most horrible invective as I began the recitation of the exorcism. Empowered by the Louviers lantern, the ritual froze Macey’s demonic form in place and expelled the demon, with awful curses and screams of rage.
We have returned Irving and his family to their home. Macey has no memory of her possession, which is just as well. I fear, however, that there will be effects on her mother, which may not reveal themselves fully for some time. Knowing your child is possessed must be terrible enough; experiencing the infernally strong grasp of that child’s hands around your throat surely must leave scars invisible to the eye.
We fear our children, and sometimes with good reason, for it is through their actions that we understand our failures. I see this only at a distance, for I had no effect on Jeremy—save by my absence, which is the signal failure of any loving parent.
For now, it is time to sit and gather my thoughts before Abigail arrives. We have developed a habit of convening in the aftermath of an event like this one just past, perhaps to share a glass of wine, perhaps only to share confidences. (The wine, I must say, is superb, far superior to the swill common in my day—although nothing matches a fine Madeira, a bottle of which was opened to toast the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In any event, I am heartily glad that the temperance movements that surged through the colonies have not persisted. The pleasure of a libation—in moderation, of course!—should be denied to no man or woman.)
I enjoy these conversations over drinks, and I have come to care deeply about Abigail. I am distant from all that I know, save for the irruptions of my previous life into this present, and those only serve to undermine my ability to acclimate myself to life in this maddening, astounding twenty-first century. Speaking with Abigail, simple talk between friends, is the best—perhaps the only—medicine with any therapeutic value against my peculiar malady.
The revelation of Jennifer’s secrets has caused me to wonder whether the same might be true of Abigail. There is no evidence to suggest that she has suffered bouts of possession, but that is not the only means by which a demon may work through an unknowing human. Apart from her recollection of seeing the four trees and Moloch, Abigail’s memories of her three days lost in the forest are gone, either erased or suppressed. She feels she should remember, however, and this feeling—together with her terrified renunciation of the experience in front of Jennifer—has transformed into an unbearable burden of guilt and denial; Jennifer, in contrast, embraced the vision. She opened herself to the reality of the demonic realms, and then her betrayal by her sister damaged her badly enough to render her vulnerable to Ancitif—and perhaps other demons as well? We do not know. Neither of them has the equilibrium one must possess to fight an enemy as wily and without compunction as our demonic adversaries. Both took up arms, which I find quite interesting—as if they knew that they were to be pressed into service in a war. Abigail chose legal means, Jennifer the route of the rebellious freedom fighter and soldier of fortune; yet both have arrived with hard-earned skills that will serve us well in the future. One hopes they will be able to resolve whatever barriers still lie between them.
