It was absurd. Death was, by my definition, an end of bodily existence and, therefore, the existence of the mind. When the organs cease to function, and the heart stops pumping the precious liquid we call blood through our veins, our body has nothing left to feed it and continue its life. The brain is left to fend for itself, and soon it starts to die and rot. There is nothing left behind but the memories of those who were aware of the deceased personʼs existence, and those who harboured both positive and negative emotions for them. And yet, I am still loosing my sleep because of the fact that I have been mind-raped by a fucking ghost! I havenʼt been on duty for two weeks. For two weeks I have been lying on my bed and staring at the little paper my mother gave me, constantly staring at the line that states that spirits exist. I kept the paper as a memory, not as a personal code. I fought the urge to throw it away and forget the whole thing, to return to the real world and start communicating with human beings again, but I couldnʼt find the strength to get rid of it.
November was reaching its end, and December was right around the corner. The only thing I liked about December was the dark snowy nights and the smell of the air. But all the other holiday nonsense was really getting on my nerve, when all the burgeois were marching to their parish church to pray for their puny little souls to be saved, while at the same time ignoring all the poor and starving creatures that were dying on their doorstep. December was a truly disgusting month that encompassed both death and hypocrisy. What a perfect time for singing Christmas carols...
The body was there, it was real, and I couldnʼt give any reasonable explanation as to how I found out about it. What was I supposed to say to my superior officer, that the girlʼs ghost showed me the resting place of her remains? But why me, why not somebody else? A lot of people must have past by the corpse in the past two years, and why didnʼt she contact them? She was silent for so long, alone in that place, covered by garbage, forgotten by all. No matter what this ghost situation might be, I am glad that I was able to give her the opportunity to be taken away from that grave of shame and despair.
Ichabod Crane, November 28th, 1795.
Crossroads didnʼt have a good reputation. Some said that they were the place where the energies of the world where caught in a whirlwind, mixed up and stopped from flowing normally. Some say that men have often made their pact with the Devil on crossroads, or have been engaged in other godless rituals. In other words, crossroads had a very bad reputation. That is why most criminals that were sentenced to death were buried there: so their souls would be caught in the whirlwind of energies, thus making them unable to find peace or return to the world of the living. The same rule applied to witches or other beings of the similar kind. But we were at the end of the 18th century, which was characterized by its value of reason, inborn human rights and freedom, tolerance, et cetera. The Age of Enlightenment could not possibly stand these superstitions. Could it? Europe has already abandoned, and has forbade, the practice of hunting and burning witches, desecrating graves in search of vampires, mutilating the bodies of those who were accused of being werewolves or vampires, and we were entering a new era. But some places, like the place where young Ichabod had the displeasure of being born into, were still very conservative and attached to the old ways.
Ichabod was sitting on the ground and staring at the fresh unmarked grave of a hanged woman. She had been a newcomer, a freethinker. Too educated for a woman, as Old Crane would say. It wasnʼt long before a man from the village proposed to her. She refused him, stating that she was a widow and that she could accept his offer because of the memory of her late husband. Her name was Mary Ann. Ichabod remembered her as a very charming and witty woman, with a very bright look in her eyes. She would give Ichabod sweets when he would cross paths with her and she gave him a copy of Gargantua and Pantagruel once, with a wink and a smile.
-What is it about, Lady Mary Ann?
-It is a satyre of the medieval frame of mind. The man who wrote it, François Rabelais, was a great intellectual, but was prosecuted because of his so-called heretic views. He influenced the creation of the Renaissance frame of mind, when the world was full of possibilities, everything was in the hands of man and man alone, not God. Science flourished, art and literature were concentrating themselves on the heritage of Rome and Ancient Greece. It was the age of polymaths and geniuses, my dear Ichabod. A great era, and my personal favourite. Europe is returning to a similar condition now with its philosophers and mathematicians.
For Ichabod, it was the equivalent of Paradise.
Soon, the man whom Mary Ann refused, started accusing her of practising witchcraft. Old Crane gave out a warrant to arrest her on the grounds of casting hurtful spells, fornicating with demons and having a close relationship with the Devil. Her trial took weeks. She was tortured in the same way the Inquisition would torture her in 16th century Spain. Her screams could be heard daily, when her bones were broken, fingernails plucked out, water poured in her stomach trough a tube... And she signed her confession, half-dead, when she could take the pain no longer. She was dragged to the scaffold, the noose was put around her thin neck, and her life was extinguished within the next few seconds.
As Ichabod sat in front of her grave, he started caressing the soil, while tears trickled down his pale face. She was innocent, he repeated to himself. Innocent! How could he trust those who have killed her? What guarantee did he have that Lady Crane wonʼt live to see a similar fate, maybe even worse? She actually did have powers, and that brought her in even more danger.
It started to thunder and young Ichabod continued his mourning of the innocent Mary Ann...
