The Hussar
The Hussar
“Is it true you once wore a basketball?” Matthew asked.
“Yes.”
“A coconut?”
“Yes.”
“A watermelon?”
“Yes.”
“A–”
“Yes, yes, yes. I’ve found the more surreal the face, the more distracted employers are when discussing pricing.”
“Is it true you’re really the guy from the Washington Irving story?”
“Somewhat. He was reporting on a legend reported to him by his friend Diedrich Knickerbocker. He told it as accurately as he could, but he got a few things wrong. I’m not a Hessian–German, yes, mercenary, yes, but technically I am not from that region of Germany, Hesse-Hanau. Only about sixty percent of German auxiliaries in the King George’s army were. And my head wasn’t taken off by a cannon ball–though I wish it was. It was taken off by a cavalry sword, and it took more than one strike.”
“Oh! Oh!” Edith flew up to the Hussar, emboldened by Matthew’s questions to ask one she had been holding back all night. “Were you Brom Bones or were you you?” She blinked. “…Wait, that doesn’t sound right…”
“I understand what you mean, klein. But no. That was not “me.” Think about it. Why would I have thrown a pumpkin at him?”
“Because you couldn’t cross the Old Dutch Church’s bridge?”
“I actually could. That was something Irving got wrong. It wasn’t that I couldn’t cross by the church, it was that I haunted the church. But say I couldn’t. Why would I throw a pumpkin?”
“To…hit Ichabod?”
“When I could have thrown my sword?”
On December 26, 1776, the Battle of Trenton signaled reversing fortunes in the Revolutionary War. Washington crossed the Delaware, and in a battle of hot blood and cold snow, defeated the Hessian garrison in a surprise attack.
In an hour the fighting was over. Most Hessians fled, but 900 were captured, 83 were wounded, and 22 were killed. Of these 22 was a soldier named Erich Weiss whose head was lopped off by a cavalry sword, and was lost in the snow.
Men buried the body and ice buried the head, but Erich Weiss did not rest well in his grave. The Weiss family were a military family descended from Teutonic knights. To triumph in battle was preferred, and to die in battle was acceptable, but Erich was slain in a surprise attack and was buried without a head in a foreign land. It was more indignity than his spirit could bear, and it rose to haunt the highways and byways of New England. On a mighty thewed horse it rode whose hoofbeats were like the drums of Hell, scanning with a headless gaze for his lost head…and maybe, he would see something that, in his immortal mania and confusion, reminded him of a head…an oddly shaped rock, a carved jack-o-lantern, or a head of flesh and blood still on the shoulders of a passerby who had the misfortune of being out on the wrong dark evening…
Fortunately, sightings of the “Headless Hessian” didn’t spread his headlessness. He would be seen carrying off a pumpkin or in very rare cases swinging a sword at a person’s neck which passed through them like mist and left a hot, red mark. He wasn’t substantial enough to do what he really wanted. Not yet.
In 1784, the Headless Hessian started concentrating his hauntings around the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow. The church was owned by Loyalists, and after they backed the losing side in the war, they had their holdings confiscated. The Headless Hessian was attracted to the church. It’s patronage was way down, it was virtually abandoned, and Loyalists, if not Hessians, were interned in its grounds. For more than a hundred years he would haunt Sleepy Hollow, thought he would occasionally roam as far as Clinton country, New York on his nightly rides.
Sightings of the Headless Hessian were recorded by New England historian Diedrich Knickerbocker, an early paranormal investigator, or anomalist, who also interviewed fairy abductee Rip Van Winkle. Diedrich’s friend Washington Irving would publish The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent featuring the Headless Hessian as the Headless Horseman in 1820.
When the Climacteric occurred in 1860, ghosts became more frequent and more powerful. The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow was seen far more often, and what was more troubling, passerby hit by his blade started to bleed. Manesologists worried that if something wasn’t done, someone was going to get their throat cut if not outright beheaded. In 1895, a group of manesologists and anomalists, including a young Charles Fort, encountered the Headless Horseman within the Old Dutch Church and broke him out of his fugue state.
The passing years had been like a dream for him. He was only vaguely aware of what he was doing, like how one is vaguely aware of strange actions they do in a dream. But now, his memory was restored in full, and he was thankful that Charles Fort and his friends had prevented him from further sullying his reputation by taking an innocent life. From that day onward, the Headless Horseman was an ally of Charles Fort, and anomalists of the Charles Fort Society to this day have a friend in New England. They just have to light a jack-o-lantern by a quiet road and he’ll appear in flash. Miss Cryptic has worked with him before, and she remarks that he is a gentleman in behavior and a demon in combat.
The Headless Horseman was analyzed by manesologists, and the written report is still taught in manesology classes today. Upon learning that he was known as the Headless Hessian and the Headless Horseman, he revealed his name was Erich Weiss and that if he had to be called something else, he would prefer to be called the Hussar, and without the “Headless.” While he was a “Hessian” in the sense that he was a German auxiliary hired to fight for the British, he wasn’t actually from Hesse-Hanau, he was from Saale-Holzen.
An analysis of his soul structure concluded that the Hussar had, in manesological terms, a strong shut, or shadow, which interfered with his sah, or spiritual body. The shadow is the part of the soul dealing with the actions, habits, and creations of a ghost. It’s what causes the ghost of a concert pianist to play notes on the air, the ghost of a race car driver to take control of a vehicle, and the ghost of a hussar to create the tools and implements of his trade out of its vaporous quasi-matter. The Hussar could create swords, pistols, and horses. He could also possess and animate these things, even in modern form. He could force a Colt revolver to obey him just as well as a musket. But as a consequence of his shadow, his spiritual body was diminished. He had very little control over how he appeared. He could change his clothing, but he couldn’t give himself a head no matter how hard he tried.
The Hussar reviewed what he had learned: the war he had been paid to fight in was long lost, he now had a body that was virtually air, he could create spectral arms, summon a horse that was also somehow himself, enter and control weapons, and no matter what he did, he would never have a head.
The first thing he did was travel to Saale-Holzen where his family estate, fortunately, still stood. He learned that, much to his satisfaction, his son had died fighting. He briefly considered staying in Germany, but it was too different from what he knew. His Germany was the Holy Roman Empire. Now it was ruled by a Prussian, Kaiser Wilhelm II. It was a completely different state, with a completely different culture.
Strangely, the world of rural New England and the Old Dutch Church were more like the world he used to know, and so he returned to Sleepy Hollow. “Washington Irving wrote me as the Headless Horseman.” he once said, “But I think I’m more akin to Rip Van Winkle.”
He returned to New England and took to living in a cabin not far from the Old Dutch Church. He spent his time gardening, riding across New England, and avoiding his fans who would occasionally search the woods for the Headless Horseman, even though he made it clear he did not want guests to gawk at the air above his shoulders. He had to move his cabin several times throughout the years, usually by having his ghost horse pull it through the sky.
In his garden, he grew pumpkins, partly because he wanted to make living things with his dead hands and partly because, though his fugue state had ended, he still had a compulsion to place things on his shoulders. It was as if there was a weighted void where his head should be, and only the presence of something head-like could fill it. Many are the children of Sleepy Hollow who have journeyed into the woods to find the Hussar’s pumpkin patch. They say that you can hear them talk on Halloween night…
But no. They really are just pumpkins.
In 1912, the afterlife known as the Borderland invaded Earth with the intent of installing ghosts as humanity’s benevolent masters. A “possession of angels” they called it, with a ghost inside every man, woman, and child. While the Circled Square was preoccupied with the Borderland, Germany took the opportunity to bomb New York City with its air fleet and start the Great War in the Air.
The Hussar was involved in both conflicts. Being a powerful ghost firmly on the side of mankind, he first assisted the Circled Square in fighting a ghost army composed of some of the greatest warriors in history. It improved his skills like nothing else fighting against samurai and Spartans and knights. In 1914, he was captured by the ghost of Alexander the Great, one of the leaders of the Borderland, who took a liking to him as a fellow warrior and treated him as a guest in his court. When the Circled Square captured Alexander’s palace, they freed the Hussar and asked him to fight on Earth while they handled the Borderland. The Hussar agreed. He had no ties to the modern Germany, and what was more, they bombed his home state.
He rode through the trenches and through the clouds, never attacking unless his enemies had gaeite weaponry which could capture ghosts. His sense of honor prevented him from leveraging the advantage of his ghost-nature over a mortal opponent.
It was on the battlefields of the Great War in the Air that the Hussar discovered he still possessed a little of his old compulsion. He found himself irresistibly drawn to collect the heads of those he killed, and sometimes, wear them on his shoulders. He couldn’t help it. If he killed someone, he had to have their head. He could feel them, like cozy fireplaces wafting to his cold, bloodless body. Even when they were buried beneath the cold mud of the trenches, he could feel them He needed to feel their warmth up-close.
This grizzly practice made him a pariah among the Allies, but he defended himself by pointing out they were no better than he was. Liquifying a man with an artillery strike was fine, beheading him was not? But he could understand their disgust. On a certain level, he was disgusted to, and he ended the Great War a bitter, self-hating creature.
The Great War in the Air ended in 1916, and the world was awash in fresh ghosts. In 1920, in New Orleans, manesologists built two “cenotaph houses” which functioned as lighthouses for wandering ghosts. They were the Palace of Ghosts, where ghosts engaged in an endless celebration of their existence and play-acted changing appointments in a royal court, and the House of Spirits, a quiet place where ghosts could reflect on themselves and work toward inner peace. The Hussar visited the House and the Palace where he met the ghosts of some of the men he slain and returned their heads to them. After doing so, he spent a year in the House of Spirits meditating on what it meant to be an immortal warrior with a disgusting compulsion. Eventually, he came to an understanding with himself. He was a mercenary. Coin for heads. He was a grimmer mercenary then he had ever been before, but he was still one nonetheless. He would fight, but he would be respected. He would have no more soldiers staring at his belt of trophies. And payment would signal respect.
He had no need for Earthly possessions, but payment for his services marked respect, and that he had a great need for.
Throughout the 1920’s, the Hussar would make a name for himself as a bounty hunter, with notable bounties including superpowered bank robber the Immortal, serial killer Carl Panzram, cannibal/sadist/pedophile Albert Fish (he was quite a piece of work), deranged telepath the Sphinx, and Earle Nelson the Gorilla Man, who despite the name wasn’t superhuman, only inhuman.
In 1923, an extraordinarily powerful ghost whose name and identity was lost to time broke through a long and indecisive fugue. For decades, he had drifted around the world as an oddly colored cloud unsure what to do, unsure who to be. But it finally came to him. He would rule, and he would rule as King Justice the First and Last.
King Justice the First and Last used his power to create an undersea afterlife in the middle of the Atlantic out of coral reefs and shipwrecks. He called his afterlife Pax, and it called to ghosts around the world just like the Palace of Ghosts and House of Spirits. Pax was as peaceful as its name implied. Ghosts could forget their earthly burdens in the dark, cool waters.
The Hussar felt the call and visited. King Justice knew of the Hussar’s history fighting in the war against the Borderland, and hired him to protect a delegation of his people on a diplomatic mission to the Borderland. The Hussar accepted, and defended them against an ambush in the court of Alexander the Great. Alexander had the attackers exiled, and peace was declared between the two afterlifes. The Borderland agreed never to attack Pax, and by extension Earth. For his contribution to the peace deal, the Hussar was knighted. It would not be the only honor King Justice would bestow upon him.
In 1933, the recently formed Monster League paid the Hussar a visit at his cabin. At first, he wanted nothing to do with them. They didn’t want to hire him for a job, they just wanted to talk, “Lonely misfits to a lonely misfit.” But none of them seemed to be warriors, and he was certain none of them were dead, and so he didn’t see how they could possibly have anything in common worth talking about and bid them a good day.
Then he learned that the tiny Frenchwoman with braided red hair, Marie Bisclavret, was a shapeshifter, a descendent of the wolf knight Bisclavret written about by Marie de France.
The shapeshifters of Ariege, who trace their lineage back to the Prince of Dawn, the first superhuman, developed a style of swordplay that made use of their superhuman senses called the skill. This skill came to Spain when St. Dominic traveled to southern France to preach against the Cathar heresy and converted several shapeshifters. The skill was codified as destreza under swordmaster and secret shapeshifter Jeronimo de Carranza who incorporated elements of Renaissance spirituality and mathematics into it, and it migrated back up north to Ariege. Destreza declined in popularity among basics, but it was never really designed for them anyway. But up north in Ariege, it flourished, and modern shapeshifters like Marie Bisclavret were masters.
The Hussar had wanted to learn destreza since he encountered shapeshifter ghosts using it in the Borderland, and in Marie he finally found his teacher. In exchange, he taught her what he learned while sparring with Alexander the Great as his prisoner and guest.
The Hussar’s relationship with the Monster League began as nothing more than an exchange of knowledge, but gradually he learned to appreciate their company. They were right. Misfits understood a misfit. He never thought he would call a deformed drunkard like Caliban a friend, but he did. Throughout the decades he has considered the Monster League his close friends, and though he isn’t the most active member in the League, he has joined them on several adventures, and he has never once charged them for the use of his blade. He never misses the Halloween party.
In 1940, the global Vril wall blitz began the Worlds War. In the first few months of the war, the Hussar fought alongside the Monster League, determined to keep his friends from harm, but eventually they talked him into traveling to Pax which swelled with the recent dead. The dead did not want their war to die with them, and King Justice struggled to keep his realm together as Axis and Allies continued to fight. King Justice was overjoyed to see the Hussar, and made him the sheriff of Pax, a role he would keep until the war ended nine years later. To aid him in his task, King Justice created for him a suit of armor made of perkunite with rhecite joints. The perkunite was invulnerable and the rhecite flexible. With his ability to control and possess arms and armor, the suit fit the Hussar like his skin. He could even control it remotely like a puppet, which helped him in engagements against biligerants who naturally focused more on the big black armor instead of the gossamer phantom. The armor, due to the large headless hole atop it, also served as a handy container for the Hussar’s various anti-ghost gaeite weaponry.
In 1949, Walt Disney’s The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad was released in theaters shortly after the end of the war. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow segment is the Hussar’s favorite film of all time, and he thinks the Wind in the Willows segment was pretty good, to. The Hussar has always been a fan of cartoons and the sentimental. One will find very few horror and war films in his collection, but many musicals. He’s quite fond of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and On Moonlight Bay.
In 1965, eccentric billionaire Leland West hired the Hussar to locate and obtain the shrunken head of a beast-god in the jungle universe of Gigipal. Leland theorized that the Hussar’s ability to feel the presence of nearby severed heads would allow him to seek it out and was willing to pay the Hussar to test the theory. It turned out Leland was correct, and the Hussar was so happy to find that his curse could be a benefit that he refunded some of Leland’s money.
In 1972, the Sons of Cain, a Hell-based organization devoted to the capture, containment, and reformation of killers, hired the Hussar. The Sons of Cain kept him very active throughout the seventies and eighties before they asked him to take a few decades off in the nineties. As an organization that immersed itself in violence, they understood how corruptive non-stop exposure could be. Still, his reputation with the Sons of Cain is so great that he’s sometimes brought out of his retirement for important cases. The Hussar reflects fondly on working with the Sons of Cain. The devils were polite, respectful, and paid him in coin–ancient, beautiful coin that stank of metal and could slide between his fingers.
You have no idea how much he prefers old money to modern paper money. He has chests of coins in his cabin. His friends in the Monster League call him a ghost pirate.
In 1978, the Hussar was presented with a gift from the Sons of Cain–his head. Through telepathic scrying, they finally located it. Apparently, the Continental soldier who beheaded him had ghoulish sensibilities and took his head as a trophy. Cleaned down to a skull, it was passed down in the family until it came into the possession of its current owner, a banker who used it as a paperweight and conversation starter.
The Hussar was a little disappointed that the man who killed him was survived by a banker without a single military man in his family, but he was overjoyed to finally, FINALLY, have his head back. He keeps the skull on a gold pedestal beneath a glass case over his fireplace. On special occasions, such as to attend a wedding or funeral, he puts it on.
In 1992, the government sponsored superteam Xtion recruited the Hussar. Xtion was created by the federal government over concerns that superheroes had become too soft and too accommodating with supervillains. In short, they were a superteam that was more willing to use lethal force than traditional superteams, and as a career soldier, the Hussar was fine with that arrangement. Besides, he had grown very bored since the Sons of Cain asked him to retire. But he eventually split with Xtion believing that his teammates were too prone to violence. He was a soldier, not a killer, and he wanted to make sure that line did not blur an inch.
In 2010, Miss Cryptic and the Charles Fort Society lit a pumpkin by an old dirt road and summoned him for an adventure. They had discovered that the brazen head of Boethius, thought lost or legendary, was being auctioned by the BOL, and they hoped that the Hussar’s ability to sense the presence of severed heads would allow them to pinpoint the brazen head. Fortunately, he was able to detect the head, even though technically it wasn’t a severed head, it was a bronze statue. Such are the mysteries of ghosts and their abilities.
The brazen head of Boethius was one of the first somatic manes, or ghosts bound to humanoid objects, in history. The head represented a milestone in the history of ghosts, artificials, and by association with Boethius, philosophy.
The BOL got quite the scare for daring to host their auction on Halloween and the brazen head of Boethius now rests in the possession of the Hussar, who keeps him (his name is John) next to his skull.
The Hussar continues to keep himself busy in the present. He still works for whoever can pay him, primarily the Sons of Cain, but he never charges his friends in the Monster League and Charles Fort Society for his aid. For them, he is always at their disposal.
The Hussar is a mercenary, but a mercenary with honor. He rides on down the centuries on a steed that does not tire. Only two things matter to a man without mortal needs–his personal honor, and his reputation. He defends both with an undying resolve.
Discussion ¬