{"id":8150,"date":"2024-07-13T11:48:10","date_gmt":"2024-07-13T15:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lecturia.org\/?p=8150"},"modified":"2026-01-20T22:59:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T02:59:07","slug":"ambrose-bierce-the-death-of-halpin-frayser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/short-stories\/ambrose-bierce-the-death-of-halpin-frayser\/8150\/","title":{"rendered":"Ambrose Bierce: The Death of Halpin Frayser"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Synopsis: <\/strong>\u201cThe Death of Halpin Frayser\u201d is a disturbing Gothic horror story by Ambrose Bierce, published on December 19, 1891, in The Wave. Lost in a forest, Halpin Frayser falls asleep and wakes up with one word on his lips: \u201cCatherine Larue.\u201d Unable to remember why he uttered that name, he falls back asleep and has a series of strange and disturbing dreams. At the same time, two men investigate a mysterious nearby cemetery in search of a criminal. The sinister atmosphere of the forest and cemetery intensifies with each discovery, revealing hidden connections and supernatural presences that defy logic and keep the reader in constant suspense.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"Ambrose<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Death of Halpin Frayser<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By Ambrose Bierce
(Full story)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For by death is wrought greater change than hath been shown. Whereas in general the spirit that removed cometh back upon occasion, and is sometimes seen of those in flesh (appearing in the form of the body it bore) yet it hath happened that the veritable body without the spirit hath walked. And it is attested of those encountering who have lived to speak thereon that a lich so raised up hath no natural affection, nor remembrance thereof, but only hate. Also, it is known that some spirits which in life were benign become by death evil altogether.\u2014Hali.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/strong>ONE dark night in midsummer a man waking from a dreamless sleep in a forest lifted his head from the earth, and staring a few moments into the blackness, said: \u201cCatherine Larue.\u201d He said nothing more; no reason was known to him why he should have said so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The man was Halpin Frayser. He lived in St. Helena, but where he lives now is uncertain, for he is dead. One who practices sleeping in the woods with nothing under him but the dry leaves and the damp earth, and nothing over him but the branches from which the leaves have fallen and the sky from which the earth has fallen, cannot hope for great longevity, and Frayser had already attained the age of thirty-two. There are persons in this world, millions of persons, and far and away the best persons, who regard that as a very advanced age. They are the children. To those who view the voyage of life from the port of departure the bark that has accomplished any considerable distance appears already in close approach to the farther shore. However, it is not certain that Halpin Frayser came to his death by exposure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had been all day in the hills west of the Napa Valley, looking for doves and such small game as was in season. Late in the afternoon it had come on to be cloudy, and he had lost his bearings; and although he had only to go always downhill\u2014everywhere the way to safety when one is lost\u2014the absence of trails had so impeded him that he was overtaken by night while still in the forest. Unable in the darkness to penetrate the thickets of manzanita and other undergrowth, utterly bewildered and overcome with fatigue, he had lain down near the root of a large madro\u00f1o and fallen into a dreamless sleep. It was hours later, in the very middle of the night, that one of God\u2019s mysterious messengers, gliding ahead of the incalculable host of his companions sweeping westward with the dawn line, pronounced the awakening word in the ear of the sleeper, who sat upright and spoke, he knew not why, a name, he knew not whose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Halpin Frayser was not much of a philosopher, nor a scientist. The circumstance that, waking from a deep sleep at night in the midst of a forest, he had spoken aloud a name that he had not in memory and hardly had in mind did not arouse an enlightened curiosity to investigate the phenomenon. He thought it odd, and with a little perfunctory shiver, as if in deference to a seasonal presumption that the night was chill, he lay down again and went to sleep. But his sleep was no longer dreamless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He thought he was walking along a dusty road that showed white in the gathering darkness of a summer night. Whence and whither it led, and why he traveled it, he did not know, though all seemed simple and natural, as is the way in dreams; for in the Land Beyond the Bed surprises cease from troubling and the judgment is at rest. Soon he came to a parting of the ways; leading from the highway was a road less traveled, having the appearance, indeed, of having been long abandoned, because, he thought, it led to something evil; yet he turned into it without hesitation, impelled by some imperious necessity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As he pressed forward he became conscious that his way was haunted by invisible existences whom he could not definitely figure to his mind. From among the trees on either side he caught broken and incoherent whispers in a strange tongue which yet he partly understood. They seemed to him fragmentary utterances of a monstrous conspiracy against his body and soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was now long after nightfall, yet the interminable forest through which he journeyed was lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lumination nothing cast a shadow. A shallow pool in the guttered depression of an old wheel rut, as from a recent rain, met his eye with a crimson gleam. He stooped and plunged his hand into it. It stained his fingers; it was blood! Blood, he then observed, was about him everywhere. The weeds growing rankly by the roadside showed it in blots and splashes on their big, broad leaves. Patches of dry dust between the wheelways were pitted and spattered as with a red rain. Defiling the trunks of the trees were broad maculations of crimson, and blood dripped like dew from their foliage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this he observed with a terror which seemed not incompatible with the fulfillment of a natural expectation. It seemed to him that it was all in expiation of some crime which, though conscious of his guilt, he could not rightly remember. To the menaces and mysteries of his surroundings the consciousness was an added horror. Vainly he sought by tracing life backward in memory, to reproduce the moment of his sin; scenes and incidents came crowding tumultuously into his mind, one picture effacing another, or commingling with it in confusion and obscurity, but nowhere could he catch a glimpse of what he sought. The failure augmented his terror; he felt as one who has murdered in the dark, not knowing whom nor why. So frightful was the situation\u2014the mysterious light burned with so silent and awful a menace; the noxious plants, the trees that by common consent are invested with a melancholy or baleful character, so openly in his sight conspired against his peace; from overhead and all about came so audible and startling whispers and the sighs of creatures so obviously not of earth\u2014that he could endure it no longer, and with a great effort to break some malign spell that bound his faculties to silence and inaction, he shouted with the full strength of his lungs! His voice broken, it seemed, into an infinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, went babbling and stammering away into the distant reaches of the forest, died into silence, and all was as before. But he had made a beginning at resistance and was encouraged. He said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI will not submit unheard. There may be powers that are not malignant traveling this accursed road. I shall leave them a record and an appeal. I shall relate my wrongs, the persecutions that I endure\u2014I, a helpless mortal, a penitent, an unoffending poet!\u201d Halpin Frayser was a poet only as he was a penitent: in his dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking from his clothing a small red-leather pocketbook, one-half of which was leaved for memoranda, he discovered that he was without a pencil. He broke a twig from a bush, dipped it into a pool of blood and wrote rapidly. He had hardly touched the paper with the point of his twig when a low, wild peal of laughter broke out at a measureless distance away, and growing ever louder, seemed approaching ever nearer; a soulless, heartless, and unjoyous laugh, like that of the loon, solitary by the lakeside at midnight; a laugh which culminated in an unearthly shout close at hand, then died away by slow gradations, as if the accursed being that uttered it had withdrawn over the verge of the world whence it had come. But the man felt that this was not so\u2014that it was near by and had not moved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A strange sensation began slowly to take possession of his body and his mind. He could not have said which, if any, of his senses was affected; he felt it rather as a consciousness\u2014a mysterious mental assurance of some overpowering presence\u2014some supernatural malevolence different in kind from the invisible existences that swarmed about him, and superior to them in power. He knew that it had uttered that hideous laugh. And now it seemed to be approaching him; from what direction he did not know\u2014dared not conjecture. All his former fears were forgotten or merged in the gigantic terror that now held him in thrall. Apart from that, he had but one thought: to complete his written appeal to the benign powers who, traversing the haunted wood, might some time rescue him if he should be denied the blessing of annihilation. He wrote with terrible rapidity, the twig in his fingers rilling blood without renewal; but in the middle of a sentence his hands denied their service to his will, his arms fell to his sides, the book to the earth; and powerless to move or cry out, he found himself staring into the sharply drawn face and blank, dead eyes of his own mother, standing white and silent in the garments of the grave!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

II<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his youth Halpin Frayser had lived with his parents in Nashville, Tennessee. The Fraysers were well-to-do, having a good position in such society as had survived the wreck wrought by civil war. Their children had the social and educational opportunities of their time and place, and had responded to good associations and instruction with agreeable manners and cultivated minds. Halpin being the youngest and not over robust was perhaps a trifle \u201cspoiled.\u201d He had the double disadvantage of a mother\u2019s assiduity and a father\u2019s neglect. Frayser p\u00e8re<\/em> was what no Southern man of means is not\u2014a politician. His country, or rather his section and State, made demands upon his time and attention so exacting that to those of his family he was compelled to turn an ear partly deafened by the thunder of the political captains and the shouting, his own included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young Halpin was of a dreamy, indolent and rather romantic turn, somewhat more addicted to literature than law, the profession to which he was bred. Among those of his relations who professed the modern faith of heredity it was well understood that in him the character of the late Myron Bayne, a maternal great-grandfather, had revisited the glimpses of the moon\u2014by which orb Bayne had in his lifetime been sufficiently affected to be a poet of no small Colonial distinction. If not specially observed, it was observable that while a Frayser who was not the proud possessor of a sumptuous copy of the ancestral \u201cpoetical works\u201d (printed at the family expense, and long ago withdrawn from an inhospitable market) was a rare Frayser indeed, there was an illogical indisposition to honor the great deceased in the person of his spiritual successor. Halpin was pretty generally deprecated as an intellectual black sheep who was likely at any moment to disgrace the flock by bleating in meter. The Tennessee Fraysers were a practical folk\u2014not practical in the popular sense of devotion to sordid pursuits, but having a robust contempt for any qualities unfitting a man for the wholesome vocation of politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In justice to young Halpin it should be said that while in him were pretty faithfully reproduced most of the mental and moral characteristics ascribed by history and family tradition to the famous Colonial bard, his succession to the gift and faculty divine was purely inferential. Not only had he never been known to court the muse, but in truth he could not have written correctly a line of verse to save himself from the Killer of the Wise. Still, there was no knowing when the dormant faculty might wake and smite the lyre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime the young man was rather a loose fish, anyhow. Between him and his mother was the most perfect sympathy, for secretly the lady was herself a devout disciple of the late and great Myron Bayne, though with the tact so generally and justly admired in her sex (despite the hardy calumniators who insist that it is essentially the same thing as cunning) she had always taken care to conceal her weakness from all eyes but those of him who shared it. Their common guilt in respect of that was an added tie between them. If in Halpin\u2019s youth his mother had \u201cspoiled\u201d him, he had assuredly done his part toward being spoiled. As he grew to such manhood as is attainable by a Southerner who does not care which way elections go the attachment between him and his beautiful mother\u2014whom from early childhood he had called Katy\u2014became yearly stronger and more tender. In these two romantic natures was manifest in a signal way that neglected phenomenon, the dominance of the sexual element in all the relations of life, strengthening, softening, and beautifying even those of consanguinity. The two were nearly inseparable, and by strangers observing their manner were not infrequently mistaken for lovers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entering his mother\u2019s boudoir one day Halpin Frayser kissed her upon the forehead, toyed for a moment with a lock of her dark hair which had escaped from its confining pins, and said, with an obvious effort at calmness:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWould you greatly mind, Katy, if I were called away to California for a few weeks?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was hardly needful for Katy to answer with her lips a question to which her telltale cheeks had made instant reply. Evidently she would greatly mind; and the tears, too, sprang into her large brown eyes as corroborative testimony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAh, my son,\u201d she said, looking up into his face with infinite tenderness, \u201cI should have known that this was coming. Did I not lie awake a half of the night weeping because, during the other half, Grandfather Bayne had come to me in a dream, and standing by his portrait\u2014young, too, and handsome as that\u2014pointed to yours on the same wall? And when I looked it seemed that I could not see the features; you had been painted with a face cloth, such as we put upon the dead. Your father has laughed at me, but you and I, dear, know that such things are not for nothing. And I saw below the edge of the cloth the marks of hands on your throat\u2014forgive me, but we have not been used to keep such things from each other. Perhaps you have another interpretation. Perhaps it does not mean that you will go to California. Or maybe you will take me with you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must be confessed that this ingenious interpretation of the dream in the light of newly discovered evidence did not wholly commend itself to the son\u2019s more logical mind; he had, for the moment at least, a conviction that it foreshadowed a more simple and immediate, if less tragic, disaster than a visit to the Pacific Coast. It was Halpin Frayser\u2019s impression that he was to be garroted on his native heath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre there not medicinal springs in California?\u201d Mrs. Frayser resumed before he had time to give her the true reading of the dream\u2014\u201cplaces where one recovers from rheumatism and neuralgia? Look\u2014my fingers feel so stiff; and I am almost sure they have been giving me great pain while I slept.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She held out her hands for his inspection. What diagnosis of her case the young man may have thought it best to conceal with a smile the historian is unable to state, but for himself he feels bound to say that fingers looking less stiff, and showing fewer evidences of even insensible pain, have seldom been submitted for medical inspection by even the fairest patient desiring a prescription of unfamiliar scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The outcome of it was that of these two odd persons having equally odd notions of duty, the one went to California, as the interest of his client required, and the other remained at home in compliance with a wish that her husband was scarcely conscious of entertaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While in San Francisco Halpin Frayser was walking one dark night along the water front of the city, when, with a suddenness that surprised and disconcerted him, he became a sailor. He was in fact \u201cshanghaied\u201d aboard a gallant, gallant ship, and sailed for a far countree. Nor did his misfortunes end with the voyage; for the ship was cast ashore on an island of the South Pacific, and it was six years afterward when the survivors were taken off by a venturesome trading schooner and brought back to San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though poor in purse, Frayser was no less proud in spirit than he had been in the years that seemed ages and ages ago. He would accept no assistance from strangers, and it was while living with a fellow survivor near the town of St. Helena, awaiting news and remittances from home, that he had gone gunning and dreaming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

III<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The apparition confronting the dreamer in the haunted wood\u2014the thing so like, yet so unlike his mother\u2014was horrible! It stirred no love nor longing in his heart; it came unattended with pleasant memories of a golden past\u2014inspired no sentiment of any kind; all the finer emotions were swallowed up in fear. He tried to turn and run from before it, but his legs were as lead; he was unable to lift his feet from the ground. His arms hung helpless at his sides; of his eyes only he retained control, and these he dared not remove from the lusterless orbs of the apparition, which he knew was not a soul without a body, but that most dreadful of all existences infesting that haunted wood\u2014a body without a soul! In its blank stare was neither love, nor pity, nor intelligence\u2014nothing to which to address an appeal for mercy. \u201cAn appeal will not lie,\u201d he thought, with an absurd reversion to professional slang, making the situation more horrible, as the fire of a cigar might light up a tomb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a time, which seemed so long that the world grew gray with age and sin, and the haunted forest, having fulfilled its purpose in this monstrous culmination of its terrors, vanished out of his consciousness with all its sights and sounds, the apparition stood within a pace, regarding him with the mindless malevolence of a wild brute; then thrust its hands forward and sprang upon him with appalling ferocity! The act released his physical energies without unfettering his will; his mind was still spellbound, but his powerful body and agile limbs, endowed with a blind, insensate life of their own, resisted stoutly and well. For an instant he seemed to see this unnatural contest between a dead intelligence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator\u2014such fancies are in dreams; then he regained his identity almost as if by a leap forward into his body, and the straining automaton had a directing will as alert and fierce as that of its hideous antagonist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what mortal can cope with a creature of his dream? The imagination creating the enemy is already vanquished; the combat\u2019s result is the combat\u2019s cause. Despite his struggles\u2014despite his strength and activity, which seemed wasted in a void, he felt the cold fingers close upon his throat. Borne backward to the earth, he saw above him the dead and drawn face within a hand\u2019s breadth of his own, and then all was black. A sound as of the beating of distant drums\u2014a murmur of swarming voices, a sharp, far cry signing all to silence, and Halpin Frayser dreamed that he was dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IV<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A warm, clear night had been followed by a morning of drenching fog. At about the middle of the afternoon of the preceding day a little whiff of light vapor\u2014a mere thickening of the atmosphere, the ghost of a cloud\u2014had been observed clinging to the western side of Mount St. Helena, away up along the barren altitudes near the summit. It was so thin, so diaphanous, so like a fancy made visible, that one would have said: \u201cLook quickly! in a moment it will be gone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a moment it was visibly larger and denser. While with one edge it clung to the mountain, with the other it reached farther and farther out into the air above the lower slopes. At the same time it extended itself to north and south, joining small patches of mist that appeared to come out of the mountainside on exactly the same level, with an intelligent design to be absorbed. And so it grew and grew until the summit was shut out of view from the valley, and over the valley itself was an ever-extending canopy, opaque and gray. At Calistoga, which lies near the head of the valley and the foot of the mountain, there were a starless night and a sunless morning. The fog, sinking into the valley, had reached southward, swallowing up ranch after ranch, until it had blotted out the town of St. Helena, nine miles away. The dust in the road was laid; trees were adrip with moisture; birds sat silent in their coverts; the morning light was wan and ghastly, with neither color nor fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two men left the town of St. Helena at the first glimmer of dawn, and walked along the road northward up the valley toward Calistoga. They carried guns on their shoulders, yet no one having knowledge of such matters could have mistaken them for hunters of bird or beast. They were a deputy sheriff from Napa and a detective from San Francisco\u2014Holker and Jaralson, respectively. Their business was man-hunting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow far is it?\u201d inquired Holker, as they strode along, their feet stirring white the dust beneath the damp surface of the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe White Church? Only a half mile farther,\u201d the other answered. \u201cBy the way,\u201d he added, \u201cit is neither white nor a church; it is an abandoned schoolhouse, gray with age and neglect. Religious services were once held in it\u2014when it was white, and there is a graveyard that would delight a poet. Can you guess why I sent for you, and told you to come heeled?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, I never have bothered you about things of that kind. I\u2019ve always found you communicative when the time came. But if I may hazard a guess, you want me to help you arrest one of the corpses in the graveyard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou remember Branscom?\u201d said Jaralson, treating his companion\u2019s wit with the inattention that it deserved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe chap who cut his wife\u2019s throat? I ought; I wasted a week\u2019s work on him and had my expenses for my trouble. There is a reward of five hundred dollars, but none of us ever got a sight of him. You don\u2019t mean to say\u2014\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, I do. He has been under the noses of you fellows all the time. He comes by night to the old graveyard at the White Church.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe devil! That\u2019s where they buried his wife.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, you fellows might have had sense enough to suspect that he would return to her grave some time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe very last place that anyone would have expected him to return to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut you had exhausted all the other places. Learning your failure at them, I \u2018laid for him\u2019 there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd you found him?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDamn it! he found me.<\/em> The rascal got the drop on me\u2014regularly held me up and made me travel. It\u2019s God\u2019s mercy that he didn\u2019t go through me. Oh, he\u2019s a good one, and I fancy the half of that reward is enough for me if you\u2019re needy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holker laughed good humoredly, and explained that his creditors were never more importunate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted merely to show you the ground, and arrange a plan with you,\u201d the detective explained. \u201cI thought it as well for us to be heeled, even in daylight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe man must be insane,\u201d said the deputy sheriff. \u201cThe reward is for his capture and conviction. If he\u2019s mad he won\u2019t be convicted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Holker was so profoundly affected by that possible failure of justice that he involuntarily stopped in the middle of the road, then resumed his walk with abated zeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, he looks it,\u201d assented Jaralson. \u201cI\u2019m bound to admit that a more unshaven, unshorn, unkempt, and uneverything wretch I never saw outside the ancient and honorable order of tramps. But I\u2019ve gone in for him, and can\u2019t make up my mind to let go. There\u2019s glory in it for us, anyhow. Not another soul knows that he is this side of the Mountains of the Moon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll right,\u201d Holker said; \u201cwe will go and view the ground,\u201d and he added, in the words of a once favorite inscription for tombstones: \u201c\u2018where you must shortly lie\u2019\u2014I mean, if old Branscom ever gets tired of you and your impertinent intrusion. By the way, I heard the other day that \u2018Branscom\u2019 was not his real name.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat is?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can\u2019t recall it. I had lost all interest in the wretch, and it did not fix itself in my memory\u2014something like Pardee. The woman whose throat he had the bad taste to cut was a widow when he met her. She had come to California to look up some relatives\u2014there are persons who will do that sometimes. But you know all that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNaturally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut not knowing the right name, by what happy inspiration did you find the right grave? The man who told me what the name was said it had been cut on the headboard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know the right grave.\u201d Jaralson was apparently a trifle reluctant to admit his ignorance of so important a point of his plan. \u201cI have been watching about the place generally. A part of our work this morning will be to identify that grave. Here is the White Church.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a long distance the road had been bordered by fields on both sides, but now on the left there was a forest of oaks, madro\u00f1os, and gigantic spruces whose lower parts only could be seen, dim and ghostly in the fog. The undergrowth was, in places, thick, but nowhere impenetrable. For some moments Holker saw nothing of the building, but as they turned into the woods it revealed itself in faint gray outline through the fog, looking huge and far away. A few steps more, and it was within an arm\u2019s length, distinct, dark with moisture, and insignificant in size. It had the usual country-schoolhouse form\u2014belonged to the packing-box order of architecture; had an underpinning of stones, a moss-grown roof, and blank window spaces, whence both glass and sash had long departed. It was ruined, but not a ruin\u2014a typical Californian substitute for what are known to guide-bookers abroad as \u201cmonuments of the past.\u201d With scarcely a glance at this uninteresting structure Jaralson moved on into the dripping undergrowth beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI will show you where he held me up,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is the graveyard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here and there among the bushes were small inclosures containing graves, sometimes no more than one. They were recognized as graves by the discolored stones or rotting boards at head and foot, leaning at all angles, some prostrate; by the ruined picket fences surrounding them; or, infrequently, by the mound itself showing its gravel through the fallen leaves. In many instances nothing marked the spot where lay the vestiges of some poor mortal\u2014who, leaving \u201ca large circle of sorrowing friends,\u201d had been left by them in turn\u2014except a depression in the earth, more lasting than that in the spirits of the mourners. The paths, if any paths had been, were long obliterated; trees of a considerable size had been permitted to grow up from the graves and thrust aside with root or branch the inclosing fences. Over all was that air of abandonment and decay which seems nowhere so fit and significant as in a village of the forgotten dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the two men, Jaralson leading, pushed their way through the growth of young trees, that enterprising man suddenly stopped and brought up his shotgun to the height of his breast, uttered a low note of warning, and stood motionless, his eyes fixed upon something ahead. As well as he could, obstructed by brush, his companion, though seeing nothing, imitated the posture and so stood, prepared for what might ensue. A moment later Jaralson moved cautiously forward, the other following.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the branches of an enormous spruce lay the dead body of a man. Standing silent above it they noted such particulars as first strike the attention\u2014the face, the attitude, the clothing; whatever most promptly and plainly answers the unspoken question of a sympathetic curiosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The body lay upon its back, the legs wide apart. One arm was thrust upward, the other outward; but the latter was bent acutely, and the hand was near the throat. Both hands were tightly clenched. The whole attitude was that of desperate but ineffectual resistance to\u2014what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Near by lay a shotgun and a game bag through the meshes of which was seen the plumage of shot birds. All about were evidences of a furious struggle; small sprouts of poison-oak were bent and denuded of leaf and bark; dead and rotting leaves had been pushed into heaps and ridges on both sides of the legs by the action of other feet than theirs; alongside the hips were unmistakable impressions of human knees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nature of the struggle was made clear by a glance at the dead man\u2019s throat and face. While breast and hands were white, those were purple\u2014almost black. The shoulders lay upon a low mound, and the head was turned back at an angle otherwise impossible, the expanded eyes staring blankly backward in a direction opposite to that of the feet. From the froth filling the open mouth the tongue protruded, black and swollen. The throat showed horrible contusions; not mere finger-marks, but bruises and lacerations wrought by two strong hands that must have buried themselves in the yielding flesh, maintaining their terrible grasp until long after death. Breast, throat, face, were wet; the clothing was saturated; drops of water, condensed from the fog, studded the hair and mustache.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this the two men observed without speaking\u2014almost at a glance. Then Holker said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPoor devil! he had a rough deal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jaralson was making a vigilant circumspection of the forest, his shotgun held in both hands and at full cock, his finger upon the trigger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe work of a maniac,\u201d he said, without withdrawing his eyes from the inclosing wood. \u201cIt was done by Branscom\u2014Pardee.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something half hidden by the disturbed leaves on the earth caught Holker\u2019s attention. It was a red-leather pocketbook. He picked it up and opened it. It contained leaves of white paper for memoranda, and upon the first leaf was the name \u201cHalpin Frayser.\u201d Written in red on several succeeding leaves\u2014scrawled as if in haste and barely legible\u2014were the following lines, which Holker read aloud, while his companion continued scanning the dim gray confines of their narrow world and hearing matter of apprehension in the drip of water from every burdened branch:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEnthralled by some mysterious spell, I stood
In the lit gloom of an enchanted wood.
The cypress there and myrtle twined their boughs,
Significant, in baleful brotherhood.

\u201cThe brooding willow whispered to the yew;
Beneath, the deadly nightshade and the rue,
With immortelles self-woven into strange
Funereal shapes, and horrid nettles grew.

\u201cNo song of bird nor any drone of bees,
Nor light leaf lifted by the wholesome breeze:
The air was stagnant all, and Silence was
A living thing that breathed among the trees.

\u201cConspiring spirits whispered in the gloom,
Half-heard, the stilly secrets of the tomb.
With blood the trees were all adrip; the leaves
Shone in the witch-light with a ruddy bloom.

\u201cI cried aloud!\u2014the spell, unbroken still,
Rested upon my spirit and my will.
Unsouled, unhearted, hopeless and forlorn,
I strove with monstrous presages of ill!

\u201cAt last the viewless\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holker ceased reading; there was no more to read. The manuscript broke off in the middle of a line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat sounds like Bayne,\u201d said Jaralson, who was something of a scholar in his way. He had abated his vigilance and stood looking down at the body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho\u2019s Bayne?\u201d Holker asked rather incuriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMyron Bayne, a chap who flourished in the early years of the nation\u2014more than a century ago. Wrote mighty dismal stuff; I have his collected works. That poem is not among them, but it must have been omitted by mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is cold,\u201d said Holker; \u201clet us leave here; we must have up the coroner from Napa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jaralson said nothing, but made a movement in compliance. Passing the end of the slight elevation of earth upon which the dead man\u2019s head and shoulders lay, his foot struck some hard substance under the rotting forest leaves, and he took the trouble to kick it into view. It was a fallen headboard, and painted on it were the hardly decipherable words, \u201cCatharine Larue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLarue, Larue!\u201d exclaimed Holker, with sudden animation. \u201cWhy, that is the real name of Branscom\u2014not Pardee. And\u2014bless my soul! how it all comes to me\u2014the murdered woman\u2019s name had been Frayser!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is some rascally mystery here,\u201d said Detective Jaralson. \u201cI hate anything of that kind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There came to them out of the fog\u2014seemingly from a great distance\u2014the sound of a laugh, a low, deliberate, soulless laugh, which had no more of joy than that of a hyena night-prowling in the desert; a laugh that rose by slow gradation, louder and louder, clearer, more distinct and terrible, until it seemed barely outside the narrow circle of their vision; a laugh so unnatural, so unhuman, so devilish, that it filled those hardy man-hunters with a sense of dread unspeakable! They did not move their weapons nor think of them; the menace of that horrible sound was not of the kind to be met with arms. As it had grown out of silence, so now it died away; from a culminating shout which had seemed almost in their ears, it drew itself away into the distance, until its failing notes, joyless and mechanical to the last, sank to silence at a measureless remove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Death of Halpin Frayser\u201d is a disturbing Gothic horror story by Ambrose Bierce, published on December 19, 1891, in The Wave. Lost in a forest, Halpin Frayser falls asleep and wakes up with one word on his lips: \u201cCatherine Larue.\u201d Unable to remember why he uttered that name, he falls back asleep and has a series of strange and disturbing dreams. At the same time, two men investigate a mysterious nearby cemetery in search of a criminal. The sinister atmosphere of the forest and cemetery intensifies with each discovery, revealing hidden connections and supernatural presences that defy logic and keep the reader in constant suspense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14661,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[563,572,570],"class_list":["post-8150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-short-stories","tag-ambrose-bierce-en","tag-horror-en","tag-united-states","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":559,"label":"Short stories"}],"post_tag":[{"value":563,"label":"Ambrose Bierce"},{"value":572,"label":"Horror"},{"value":570,"label":"United States"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Ambrose-Bierce-La-muerte-de-Halpin-Frayser.jpg",1024,1024,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Juan Pablo Guevara","author_link":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/author\/spartakku\/"},"comment_info":"","category_info":[{"term_id":559,"name":"Short stories","slug":"short-stories","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":559,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":419,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":559,"category_count":419,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Short stories","category_nicename":"short-stories","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":563,"name":"Ambrose Bierce","slug":"ambrose-bierce-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":563,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":7,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":572,"name":"Horror","slug":"horror-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":572,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":127,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":570,"name":"United States","slug":"united-states","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":570,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":294,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}