Can Such Things Be?
Bierce, Ambrose, 1842-1914?
English
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Below is a summary of Can Such Things Be?
CAN SUCH THINGS BE?
Contents:
The death of Halpin Frayser
The secret of Macarger's Gulch
One summer night
The moonlit road
A diagnosis of death
Moxon's master
A tough tussle
One of twins
The haunted valley
A jug of sirup
Staley Fleming's hallucination
A resumed identity
Hazen's brigade
A baby tramp
The night-doings at "Deadman's"
A story that is untrue
Beyond the wall
A psychological shipwreck
The middle toe of the right foot
John Mortonson's funeral
The realm of the unreal
John Bartine's watch
A story by a physician
The damned thing
Haita the shepherd
An inhabitant of Carcosa
The Stranger
THE DEATH OF HALPIN FRAYSER
I
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.--Hali.
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: "Catherine Larue." He said nothing more; no
reason was known to him why he should have said so much.
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.
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--everywhere the way to safety when
one is lost--the 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 madrono and fallen into a dreamless sleep. It was hours
later, in the very middle of the night, that one of God's 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.
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
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