Thoreau on Wolf Hill

by Oak, B. B.

  Solomon went on to describe, in grisly detail, other experiences with the Living Dead, which I knew were but decaying corpses. Intending to challenge his claims with medical facts when he was done mesmerizing his gullible audience, I gave him the same rapt attention and did not mark Henry Thoreau come into the Sun. Hence I was most surprised when he took a seat at my table.

  “What is afoot?” I immediately asked him, knowing that he would not seek me out in a tavern unless he had something significant to communicate to me.

  And so he did. He reported that he had just delivered my cousin Julia to our grandfather’s house, where she now awaited me. I remained silent, trying to digest this stunning news. My stomach roiled.

  “Adam, did you hear me?” Henry said.

  I nodded and drained my glass of cider. “Is her husband with her?”

  “She is alone,” he said.

  “He will eventually join her, I suppose.”

  “She made no mention of it.”

  “That does not mean he will not.”

  “That you will have to ask her yourself. As I said, she awaits you at the house.”

  I did not move.

  “I could accompany you there,” Henry said, “or be on my way and allow you to greet Julia alone. Which would you prefer?”

  “I would prefer that she never came back here.”

  Henry’s countenance remained impassive, but his deep-set eyes regarded me with sympathy. “Well, she has, my friend. And now you must deal with it.”

  “In a while.” I directed my attention back to Solomon Wiley holding forth. He, in turn, directed his attention upon us.

  “There sit the two men who dared interfere with my last slaying,” he pronounced, jutting his finger our way. “If they had not talked my brother out of taking Joanna outside to breathe in the smoke of her revenant sister’s burning heart and then eat the ashes, she would be with us still.”

  Both Henry and I rose from our seats to meet his challenge head on. “You spew dangerous lies that go against the laws of nature,” I shouted loud enough for all to hear.

  “And against all goodness of spirit,” Henry added. “What purpose do you serve with all this fear-mongering?”

  “My purpose is noble,” Solomon shouted back. “I know what must be done to stop all this dying.” He turned from us and back to his eager audience. “Doctors cannot help you. You have seen this for yourselves as more and more of your friends and family die despite Dr. Walker’s ministrations. Only I can stop the undead from feeding amongst your loved ones at night. That is why Divine Providence has brought me to Plumford. Any here who ask my help will receive it.”

  “I presume your so-called help carries a fee,” Henry said.

  Solomon bridled. “I do not do this for money! There are far easier ways to earn a livelihood than as a vampyre slayer.”

  “Yet you still choose to earn yours as one.” Henry made no effort to hide his disdain. “Hence, you expect remuneration, do you not?”

  “I would gladly perform my service for free but alas, I am not a rich man. I must have something to live on.”

  “Just as your fictitious vampyres must have blood to live on?”

  Solomon gave Henry a hateful look, and for a moment I thought he might strike my friend. I instinctively fisted my hands, ready to retaliate if he did. But Solomon must have decided it would be more profitable to play to his audience than to take us on.

  “My work requires a strong will and a hard stomach and is most dangerous,” he continued, addressing the men at the bar. “Few care to attempt it, and some have disappeared in the act of performing it, for a vampyre can be the most deadly of foes. If one is preying upon your family members, fifty dollars is all I ask to destroy it. That is a small price to pay to save a loved one from the grave, is it not?”

  “No man could disagree with such a sentiment as that,” Ruggles said.

  “Nor is it unlawful to kill those already dead,” Constable Beers pointed out and offered to buy the Great Vampyre Slayer a drink. The offer was readily accepted by Solomon, but before his grog could be poured the tavern door was thrown open by a youth with a pair of rabbits slung over his shoulder and a fowling piece in his hand.

  “I come to fetch the constable,” he called out. “His missus told me he could be found here.”

  Beers reluctantly left the bar and went over to the boy by the door. After listening a moment Beers motioned for Henry and me to join him outside.

  “Young Tim here,” Beers told us as we stood under the swinging tavern sign, “was hunting instead of being at school as he should have been and found a dead man on Wolf Hill.”

  “He looked mighty dead,” the boy said.

  “Were his eyes open?” I asked him.

  “He was lying on his stomach. I couldn’t see his eyes, and I didn’t want to get close up to him. He did not budge when I shouted.”

  “He could be unconscious,” I said. “If so, we may still be able to help him. Let us make haste.”

  Without further delay off we all went in Beers’s wagon, which was standing in front of the tavern as usual. The boy directed us less than a mile down the highway and then, on foot, about forty yards up Wolf Hill and into the woods. The body lay by the narrow path cutting through the woods, one both Henry and I often took as a shortcut between Concord and Plumford. It was so steep and narrow that most pedestrians kept to the highway although doing so made the journey between the two towns a quarter hour longer. The well-traveled public road below was visible through the bare trees, but the path was not visible from the road.

  It had rained heavily in the early morning, and the man was lying facedown on a sodden bed of leaf litter, moss, and loam. I turned him over, and his blue eyes, cloudy in death, stared up at the sky. I immediately knew how he had died.

  “His jugular vein has been ripped open, causing him to bleed to death,” I declared. “We need a Coroner’s Jury convened here right away.”

  “I’ll go tell Mr. Daggett to round one up,” Beers said. And off he hurried to his wagon, the boy following close at his heels.

  Henry bent down to examine the body with me. “I know this man!” he said. “His name is Chauncey Bidwell from Concord.”

  “If he was a friend of yours, I am sorry,” I said.

  “He was a student of mine at the Concord Academy about eight years ago, but we were never friends. In truth, I liked him very little,” Henry said. “I did like his father very much, however. Mr. Bidwell was a gunsmith of great skill, acknowledged as a master craftsman. He died about a year ago, and now Mrs. Bidwell and her daughters must endure yet another loss.” Henry gently brushed leaves and dirt from the corpse’s face and closed the eyes. “Pray they are spared the sight of Chauncey’s horrible neck wound. They admired his good looks almost as much as he himself did.”

  The dead man had even features, curled blond hair, and a luxuriant mustache. He was wearing a fine black overcoat with a thick astrakhan fur collar, and his silk hat lay close by his head. I unbuttoned his coat, looking for additional wounds. I saw no blood on his velvet frock coat, gold brocade vest, or tight, checkered trousers. Even his white satin shirt and carefully knotted silk cravat were spotless. The moist ground he had lain facedown upon must have soaked up all the blood pouring out of his open vein.

  “How long do you estimate he has been dead?” Henry asked me.

  I felt his limbs, still stiff with rigor mortis. “No more than eighteen hours. Of course the cold ground and low temperature make such an estimation little better than a guess.”

  “If the body had been out here more than a single night, the crows and foxes would have gnawed at it,” Henry said.

  “Perhaps small animals did nibble around the throat wound a bit,” I said. “Look how the flesh has been wrenched away. A knife would not leave such a wide gash.”

  “I do not think the weapon used was a knife,” Henry said. “I surmise a hooked blade of some kind was sunk into the throat and then yanked from
it, disgorging tissue. To accomplish this, the murderer had to be facing Bidwell. But Bidwell did not fall backward after being struck. He must have turned from his attacker and tried to get away before he collapsed facedown. Yet the attacker did not strike at him again.”

  “One strike was all it took to kill him,” I said.

  “If murder was the intention, why not a few more vicious slashes to be sure the job was done?”

  “The intention could have been robbery, not murder.”

  “Possibly,” Henry said, but when he searched the victim’s jacket and vest pockets he found a small brass key, a beautifully carved ivory comb, and a handsome calf-skin wallet containing bank notes and coins.

  “So the killer wasn’t after Bidwell’s money,” I said.

  “Nor his fancy hair comb,” Henry said wryly. He replaced the articles, checked Bidwell’s overcoat pockets, and found another brass key. It was bigger and more ornate, with a fleur-de-lis at the base, attached to a black, twisted silk cord. He put it back and sniffed the clothing beneath the heavy coat. “I discern a sweetish scent,” he said.

  I too sniffed, but picked up nothing. I was not surprised. Henry’s sense of smell is far more acute than most people’s. Indeed, I have heard it remarked that no hound can scent better than Henry David Thoreau. “Does it smell like perfume?” I asked him.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “The scent is unfamiliar to me, but I know nothing about perfume. I venture a dandy like Bidwell would apply it upon his person, however.”

  “Was Bidwell coming from or going to Concord when he was murdered, I wonder.”

  “What does the ground tell us?” Henry moved around the body looking for tracks. “He must have been killed before the rain storm, for I discern no trace of footprints.”

  He sifted through the undergrowth bordering the path and found nothing. He directed his attention to the trees, and something about a birch caught his attention. He stepped closer to it and called me over to regard some slashes on the bark. There were about twenty of them at shoulder height, no more than six inches long but quite deep.

  “They look like the markings a bear’s claws would leave,” I said.

  “Unfortunately, bears in these parts were hunted out decades ago, along with the wolves,” Henry said. “Farmers have no tolerance for wild creatures. No, these gouges were made by an implement fashioned by man. Could it have been the same one that felled Bidwell?”

  “Yes, the wound to his neck seems to be the result of the same slashing motion. But what sort of weapon or tool would it have been? And why strike it against a tree trunk?”

  “Perhaps to vent crazed anger or mad impatience whilst waiting here to confront Bidwell.”

  I regarded the horrible slash to the young man’s throat. “Crazed and mad indeed.”

  We heard a wagon approaching. I looked down toward the road to see it was Beers returning. He had left the boy back in Plumford and had brought with him Coroner Fred Daggett and one of the men Daggett had chosen to be a juror. It was Solomon Wiley. As soon as Daggett came up the hill I took him aside to protest.

  “Is it not your duty as coroner to select suitable jurors?” I said.

  That put his nose out of joint right off. “And so I have.”

  “Solomon Wiley is not a Plumford resident,” I said. “He does not even reside in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

  “According to him, he has removed from Rhode Island and now lives here with his brother,” Daggett replied frostily. “Thus he qualifies as a juror.”

  “He is not mentally qualified,” I said. “He claims he is a vampyre slayer.”

  “And many in town believe him,” Daggett said.

  I was shocked to hear it. “Do you?”

  “Mr. Wiley seems of sound enough mind to me,” Daggett said. “It was hard enough to gather up six men to form a jury this quickly without being too damn particular.”

  The other five jurors arrived, two in a chaise, one in a buckboard, one in a sulky, and one on horseback. Except for Solomon, they were a sensible and sober enough bunch, and Mr. Jackson, the sawyer, also conveniently served as town undertaker and casket maker. His son Hyram had come with him, but he stayed a good distance away whilst the rest of us gathered round the body.

  Henry identified Bidwell, and I gave my opinion regarding cause of death. We pointed to the slash marks in the tree and suggested that the weapon that had made them could have been the same one used on Bidwell’s neck. The jury quickly voted in agreement with my opinion that the man had been murdered.

  “I shall inform Justice Phyfe of our verdict, and he will institute an investigation,” Coroner Daggett said.

  Solomon Wiley spoke up. “There is no need to investigate further. I can tell you right off who murdered this man. A vampyre did it.”

  “That is ridiculous!” I protested and looked to Daggett. I could tell from his dismayed expression that he had come to the realization that Solomon should not have taken part in the inquest. But apparently Daggett was still all haired up that I had questioned his judgment, for it was me he reprimanded.

  “No one interrupted you when you were giving your point of view, doctor,” he said. “Now we will hear Mr. Wiley out.”

  And so we did.

  “There are revenants who feed on their living kin, but they are not the only such fiends,” Solomon began, modulating his voice to sound almost reasonable. “There exist some far worse. These roam the earth for eternity and suck blood and kill and make more of their own kind at their whim. You see here the victim of one such.” He explained all this to us with the self-assurance of a seer.

  “This man is talking humbug, and he is making a sham of your inquest,” Henry told Daggett.

  The coroner was finally ready to agree. “Thank you for your opinion, Mr. Wiley,” he said. “And now we will conclude—”

  “Fact, not opinion!” Solomon interrupted. “All the evidence is right before your eyes. The slashes on that tree yonder—made by a vampyre’s talons. The gash in the corpse’s neck—made by a vampyre’s fangs. The poor man was then sucked dry!”

  “As I have already explained, he bled to death from his wound,” I said.

  “Then where is the blood?”

  “It seeped into the ground,” Henry said.

  “Wrong! It went into the vampyre’s maw. ’Tis blood from the living that keeps the dead alive.”

  In the gathering gloom I observed the whites of the jurymen’s wide eyes as they looked around them. “Ain’t it time we left here?” one of them suggested.

  “Yes, let us depart,” Daggett said.

  Solomon held up his fist, forefinger extended. “I have only one more thing to say. Indeed, one word.” He paused dramatically until all eyes were again upon him. Then he raised his voice to a boom. “Witiku!”

  “You think it was him that done this?” a juror said, sounding betwixt doubt and belief.

  “None other!” Solomon said. “All this revenant activity hereabouts has roused Witiku from his long sleep, and he is on the warpath once again. But do not fear. If anyone can put a stop to him, I can.”

  “What drivel,” Henry said, struggling, I could see, to keep his voice calm. “This charlatan hears a hoary tale in the tavern and now twists it to his own advantage.”

  “I shall pass on your opinions concerning how this man died to Justice Phyfe,” Daggett told Wiley with cool formality. “And I now officially close this inquest.” It was clear he wanted nothing more to do with it.

  Undertaker Jackson called to his son, but Hyram did not move. Jackson went over to him, and they talked in low tones for some time as jurors gave worried glances westward at the setting sun. Finally, Jackson grabbed his son’s arm and hauled him up to the body.

  “Hyram claims he feels too feeble to lift dead weight today,” Jackson told us. “But I reckon he is just too lazy.”

  I stepped forward to take a look at the young man. He is an ungainly lad for sure, with lanky limbs and bad skin, but he d
id not appear ill to me, merely frightened by talk of vampyres. “Pay no attention to Mr. Wiley’s wild speculation,” I counseled him. “That unfortunate young man was killed by one as human as you or I.”

  That did not seem to much comfort Hyram. When his father told him to pick up the corpse’s feet, he shook his small, bullet-shaped head most vehemently. But after Jackson gave him a forceful whack on the back he complied, taking an ankle in each hand. Jackson placed his hands under the dead man’s arms. They raised him up and began to walk down to the buckboard, Hyram going backwards as he had the lesser load, when all of a sudden Hyram let out a scream. He dropped the legs, tripped as he backed away, and fell down hard on his posterior. His father, still holding up his end of the body, looked down at his son in puzzlement.

  “What the devil’s got into you, Hyram?”

  “His eyes come open, and he looked straight at me, Pa!”

  “It happens sometimes, son,” Jackson said in a gentler tone. “A corpse’s eyes just fly open. Now get up and let’s get on with it.”

  Hyram continued to sit on the ground, trembling.

  Jackson looked mortified by his son’s behavior. “Hyram ain’t used to handling the dead yet,” he told us.

  Hyram looked up at his father, his homely face contorted with fear. “He spoke to me, Pa!”

  “God save us! The corpse lives!” Solomon pronounced. “He is a vampyre in the making.”

  As the rest of the men shrank back from the body, Henry stepped forward and took up the feet. “Let us get this deceased fellow into your wagon before that madman defames him further, Mr. Jackson.”

  “My son is not a madman!”

  “I was referring to Solomon Wiley.”