The Seeker: A Mystery at Walden Pond

by R. B. Chesterton

  “I could recommend a few. ‘The Turn of the Screw’ is one of the scariest stories I’ve ever read.”

  His eyebrows shifted up. “I read a bit of Henry James when I was younger. I once thought I might be a scribbler myself. Have to say I like the new breed of writer. They get to the point and don’t use a lot of ten-dollar words.”

  Everyone was a critic, but I was pleasantly surprised. McKinney’s honesty was refreshing.

  “If I see any children, I’ll let you know.” It was late, but I had more writing to do.

  “I’d appreciate it. Young’uns don’t always understand the capricious nature of the weather and how deadly it can be.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Joe told me you’re hiking the pond trails. You take care, too. When the snow covers the ground, it’s easy to step in a hole or trip over a vine or limb. Grownups freeze just as readily as a child. You want me to drive you back to the cabin?”

  “No, thanks. I need the exercise. I grew up in the mountains. I’ll take care.”

  He put his smoky hat back on and left. I followed him, ready to get back to work.

  I entered a warm, comfortable cabin and set immediately to work. By midnight, my neck was cramped and stiff and my shoulders aching. Putting aside my writing, I turned off the computer, swallowed a mild sleeping pill, and took Bonnie’s journal and a glass of wine to bed.

  Sipping the wine, I read from the middle of the journal. I’d perused it front to back numerous times, and now I liked to let the pages open on their own. The section dealt with Bonnie’s abilities—and Thoreau’s interest in the supernatural.

  Strange dreams have always attended me. Some forecast the future, others seem untethered to any time or place. My most recent dreams involve the child, Louisa May. She is a precocious young lady with an active mind, and a will of her own. She is not a spirit who will be forced into the constraints of a corset and a marriage.

  In my dreams, I see her surrounded by numerous children. Vivacious girls. There is laughter and tears, as there would be in any household. And Louisa is writing at a desk beside an open window that gives a view of the orchard.

  These are not her children. Perhaps she is a teacher, like her father, and these are her future pupils. She loves them greatly, each for their individuality. They will bring her happiness.

  With the clarity of hindsight, I knew Bonnie was describing the March family, the literary children who would sustain the entire Alcott family. Jo, Meg, Beth, Amy, Laurie—I recognized them. Bonnie would never have, though, because Louisa May Alcott was still a child. She hadn’t written the first word of Little Women.

  But there was another passage I sought. The police chief’s visit brought to mind a mention my aunt had made of finding tracks near the cabin at Walden. It had been only a brief mention, more of a curiosity than anything else. I had come to believe that my aunt longed for a child.

  As I found the place and began to read, dread caught me. This was not the way I remembered it. I had read the journal repeatedly, and though I knew of Bonnie’s and Thoreau’s attempts to speak with departed spirits, I didn’t remember this dark account. I held my breath and read, more and more concerned that I had no recollection of my aunt’s words.

  I’m reluctant to put these words on the page. This morning, before he went to attend his surveying chores, Henry asked that we attempt a communication. He sorely misses his brother, John. Though I was reluctant to do this, I yielded to Henry’s impassioned pleas.

  I should have heeded my instincts. The session was a disaster. I haven’t honed my abilities to bring forth the dead, and what I brought into our cabin was not his brother. The creature, for I am sure it had never been human, was racked with horrid spasms. It gasped for air and thrashed about. Though it tried to speak, it could not. Something gagged it. And before I could banish the entity, Henry leapt up from the table and fled into the woods crying his brother’s name.

  I remain shaken to my core. Whatever good I’d intended to do has been overshadowed by a terrible harm. Henry is beside himself with a grief I am helpless to console. And we are being watched. I’m certain of it. Someone comes up to the cabin while we sleep. I’ve found footprints. Small ones, as if a child were spying on us. But there are no children loose in the Walden woods at night. I’ve told no one of this. Henry is too distraught, and others would think me mad. Perhaps it is just a fancy turned into a shade. Before I speak of it to others, I need to discover more.

  How had I missed this? Had my aunt really called up someone, or something, dead? I didn’t doubt that generations of past Cahills had such talents. It was in our blood. It was the curse I’d escaped, thanks to my grandmother. But how had I missed the terror of that passage?

  I pushed the journal aside, poured another glass of wine, and took another sleeping pill. The pills were mild, harmless, and my nerves were too on edge to sleep without assistance. Tomorrow, I would re-read the journal. Sunshine would destroy the dark images, and I would laugh at myself and my foolishness.

  The wine and sleeping pill kicked in, and I snapped off the bedside lamp. The fire flickered merrily, casting moving shadows about the cabin. Snug beneath a pile of quilts, I drifted into sleep.

  Granny Siobhan rocked gently in a chair before the fire. Her body was too thin, almost skeletal. The hands that clutched her shawl reminded me of a dead person. I burrowed deep beneath the covers, but she knew I was awake. She came to the bed and sat beside me. Her sunken eyes were unreadable; for the first time, I was afraid of her.

  “You’ll soon need your gift,” she said. “You did not come to Walden Pond by accident. Your destiny brought you here. Use care, my child. Use care.”

  I woke up struggling against the heavy quilts. I knew I’d been dreaming, but the images were so vivid, so real. I glanced toward the fireplace expecting to see the old rocker my grandmother loved. There was nothing there. No chair, no Granny. Just the fire and the soft pop of a few pearls of moisture.

  I wanted some water and the bathroom, but I was reluctant to put my feet on the floor. A childhood fear—the bogeyman under the bed—kept me rigid beneath the covers. I checked my watch. It was three-thirty-three. At least three hours until daybreak.

  Had Granny really visited me, drifting across the divide of the dead? Or had Bonnie’s journal ignited my overactive imagination? Either answer was plausible.

  As a child I’d seen vapors in the shape of people, but Granny gave them no credence. She had a logical explanation for each incident. She told me reason was the key to happiness, and urged me to focus on my studies and not phantoms. I willingly heeded her cautions. The idea of the dead traipsing around scared me, as it would any sane person. I didn’t wish to have them following me, tapping bony fingers against the glass windowpanes of my bedroom late at night. Their time was done, and I wanted no part of them.

  4

  The sun on the snow blinded me. The predicted nor’easter had passed to the north of us, running into Vermont and Maine with downed power lines and impassable roads. I stood at the edge of the woods beside Walden Pond. I’d been drawn there to see the snowfall. My reward was a purity and brilliance that almost knocked the breath from me. Walden Pond seemed caught between the powdery blue of the sky and the snow-coated evergreens. The edges of the water had begun to freeze, a process that would continue until the surface of the lake was solid.

  I caught sight of a spot of color at the edge of the water, so I tramped down to see what it was. Lying atop the snow was a Barbie doll. She wore a ball gown like Cinderella. It took me a moment to realize there were no tracks leading to her. It was as if she’d been dropped from the sky.

  Barbie in a ballgown. I glanced around to see if someone might be playing a prank. The doll, sitting atop the snow, couldn’t have been out there for long. She was pristine.

  Had I once had a doll like that? I tried to remember, but dredging the past brought other things up from the muck of memory. I’d successfully buried so much of my childhood.
Selective memory. That was how I’d managed to deal with my family. Too many bad memories like the death of black-haired, blue-eyed Uncle Mike, my father’s youngest brother, blasted almost in half by a rival oxy dealer with a sawed-off 12-gauge on the side of a backwoods road.

  Once the past began to uncoil, I couldn’t stop it. I tried not to remember the still ticking of the hallway clock as my mother died. My father’s sobs and pleadings with her to stay, not to leave. The red splotch of blood that soaked his white shirt and left a permanent stain in the heart-of-pine floor around the chair where she sat.

  I’d played with dolls. I was sure of it, though I couldn’t pin down an exact memory. Maybe a blond-haired Barbie like the one that lay in the snow. Easing down the lip of the bank, I moved cautiously toward the doll. The snow covered a multitude of hazards—holes, branches, undergrowth. A wrong move could mean a sprained ankle or worse.

  At last I reached the Barbie and picked her up. Her dress was barely damp from the snow. She wore a blue gown with a white net overlay that glittered. Snow Queen Barbie. On her perpetually pointed feet were silver sandals, and over her arm was a white fur wrap. Elegant. A fantasy figure for a young girl.

  But there was no girl. And no footprints. Just Barbie. I laid her back in the snow and turned to leave. My bootprints were deep and irregular. Impulsively, I picked up the doll again and tucked her into my pocket. It seemed wrong to leave her in the freezing snow.

  Back at the cabin, I picked up my well-worn copy of Thoreau’s Walden and read from it again. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

  There was no doubt Thoreau’s intention was a solitary pursuit of life’s meaning. But fate handed him something else entirely. A time of intimacy and shared love. It ended much too soon. And in ending, it had stolen Bonnie’s life.

  What is the cost of love? Is it worth the price that must be paid?

  A sharp knock at the door made me drop my pen. I got up to discover Patrick standing on my doorstep, his handsome face flushed with cold. “Dorothea told me to ask if you’ll be at dinner tonight.”

  I recognized a lie when I heard it, but I motioned him inside. The thought of tackling Thoreau’s great work of solitude and turning it inside out loomed too large on such a cold day. Patrick would be a smashing distraction.

  “Would you like a cup of cocoa?” I had fresh milk and sugar and chocolate. The tiny kitchenette held a two-burner stove where I could heat things.

  “With some rum?” he moved an old rocker from the corner and plopped down in front of the banked fire. “You need another log. It’s about to go out.” He threw wood on the fire and stirred it into blazing light. Men were never content with hot embers. It was always the blaze for them.

  “Why are you really here? You didn’t come for a cup of cocoa.” I took the straight-backed chair at my desk and set it beside him.

  “You’re right. I don’t want cocoa. I saw you go out early this morning. I thought you might need someone to warm you up after frisking about in the snow.”

  “And that someone would be you?”

  “You could go a long way and do a lot worse.”

  He was impertinent and I couldn’t stop the smile. “Are you on the clock for Dorothea?”

  He looked surprised. “Yeah. But I figure keeping her tenant happy is a good service for her. A beautiful woman like you, alone. That’s not a happy picture.”

  “And this is all for Dorothea’s good?”

  “You bet.” He leaned forward and put his hand on my knee.

  Whether it was the suddenness of his touch or my own reluctance to partake of intimacy, I moved away from him. “I’m not one of the girls who follow you like puppies, Patrick. I’m here to work.”

  He chewed his bottom lip. “I like you, Aine. I flirt with the others, the girls, but I don’t take it any further than that. They like the attention. You’re different. You’re … serious.”

  “And that wouldn’t be a good thing for either of us.”

  He pushed out of the chair. “I warn you, I don’t give up. Maybe if we just climbed in the sack and tested it out, I could let you go.”

  “Not going to happen.” The desire of a younger man is a flattering thing, but wisdom prevailed. Patrick might become a vice that would be hard to break. I wasn’t immune to my physical needs, but I’d sworn off emotional engagement. I suspected Patrick would be fun, and I was smart enough to know I couldn’t miss what I’d never had. With so much riding on the work I accomplished while at Concord, time was too precious to expend on romantic endeavors.

  I went to the kitchen and filled a glass with water. “I’m serious, Patrick. You need to leave.” I drank deeply, waiting for him to comply.

  At last he accepted my decision and sauntered out the door, and I returned to my desk. Thoreau’s book slipped off the desk and fell to the floor. Beneath it was Bonnie’s journal, opened to a page near the middle.

  While I thrive in the Walden solitude with Henry, I also yearn for more. He tells me that each moment is precious, and life is wasted by wishing for the future, yet I can’t stop myself. This morning I came across a young girl in the woods, a beautiful child with golden ringlets and blue eyes framed with thick dark lashes. She stepped out from behind a sycamore holding her dolly. Too timid to come forward, she simply watched me with her deep blue eyes. Then she was gone. The pain of her departure forced me to realize how much I want my own child. Henry is opposed. He immerses himself in his studies and the solitude of nature. I love those things, too, but my arms crave the solid weight of a baby.

  This passage I remembered. I’d read it a dozen times, but it had taken on new meaning after my Barbie encounter. The parallels between the past and present were unsettling, to say the least.

  I flipped the journal closed. I understood Bonnie’s desire too well. I’d once felt the longing for a child. A great weariness settled over me.

  Now wasn’t the time for depression and the morbid glumness that robbed me of ambition. Research on the Internet was all well and good, but nothing could take the place of a library. I needed the older records stored in the Concord library. Tomorrow, I would find time to explore the town’s records. I would establish Bonnie’s presence in Concord and anchor my dissertation in solid, proven fact.

  5

  My library research took me down a rabbit trail of men’s hairstyles in the mid-1800s. The information was useless for my dissertation, but it amused me. I’d awakened with a maddening depression, and I’d learned to pace myself when the blues settled on my shoulders. Sometimes a bit of laughter was better than the bottle of pills my therapist had prescribed. Swallowing medication is hard for me. A mild sleeping pill now and again I can manage, but no more. Dr. O’Gorman tells me it’s psychological. An aversion to the family industry of peddling oxy has affected my gag reflex when it comes to pills. No worries that I’d ever kill myself with drugs.

  Walking home, I paused at a coffee shop and bakery. My mouth watered at the scent of cinnamon and hot bread wafting from the Honey Bea. I’d worked up an appetite and hadn’t eaten lunch. A latte and sweet bun would remedy the situation and hold me until Dorothea served dinner.

  I’d pushed the door open and stepped inside before I saw Joe. He sat at a back table, coffee steaming in front of him in a large white mug. He watche
d me with undisguised interest. My first inclination was to back out the door, but I held my ground. My reaction was unreasonable. I behaved as if I were guilty of something, and I knew what I suffered from. I’d felt it at Walden Pond, and now I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t attracted to him. He was a good-looking man with a defined jaw and dark hair that fell across his forehead. Ruggedly handsome. My body reacted to him even if my brain denied my interest.

  After placing my order, I took a seat and pulled a book from my satchel. Joe could stare, but I would ignore him. I buried myself in a critical analysis of Thoreau’s socialist leanings. I read the same paragraph over and over again.

  “Miss Cahill.” Joe stood over me, coffee in hand. “Mind if I join you?”

  I wanted to say yes, that I minded greatly, but it would have been a lie. Nodding to the chair across from me, I marked my place in the book and closed it.

  “How’s your stay at the inn going?”

  Warmth crept up my neck and into my cheeks. “It’s very nice.” What was wrong with me? The question was harmless enough and not even personal.

  “Dorothea’s a talker, but she has a huge heart. She’ll take care of you as if you were her own.”

  “Yes.” I felt like a callow schoolgirl instead of a grown woman.

  “She said you were working on your dissertation.”

  “Yes. On Thoreau.” My hands hugged my elbows, although the room was toasty warm and my face was hot.

  “So that’s your interest in Walden Pond.” Joe seemed genuinely curious. “He was always one of my favorites. He understood serenity and the value of being alone.” He rubbed the dark shadow of a beard. “My mother always said a man needs to live alone for a couple of years to appreciate the company of a woman. Thoreau would’ve been just about ready, based on Mother’s standards.”

  Surprise must have scurried across my face, because he laughed. “Is your reading of Thoreau different?”