Sheriff Corwin turned a blind eye as long as he could but eventually, the villager's cries for help persuaded him to do otherwise. Officially, he knew he could do nothing, but still, he decided to pursue the stranger on his own. He went back to Mr. Barboux's residence above the apothecary to search for clues. He found him in the same dust filled room with the curtains drawn, although it was midday, and when he knocked, the stranger made no effort to evade him. In fact, he did not seem surprised by his return. He smiled curtly and led him into the parlor where once again there was absolutely no place for either of them to sit and with a sweep of his arm, cleared a path for the sheriff to a rather ugly, faded yellow chair beside a tiny side table where he offered to serve him tea. The sheriff immediately noticed the door leading into the interior of the abode was now completely blocked by stacks of boxes and wooden crates like a make shift barricade.

  “What's all this for?” he asked, pointing to the disorderly mess. “Are you in the process of moving?”

  The restless stranger did not answer. He seemed fidgety and especially agitated about something that day. While the sheriff continued to sit, he insisted on endlessly milling about, doing odd tasks like randomly opening and closing a book after only a brief scan, and mumbling incessantly in a confused manner. He shifted objects needlessly from one table to another, opened a spurious jar and smelled it, and occasionally scribbled something down on a scrap of paper. The sheriff could see no rhythm or reason to his actions, other than a kind of madness driven by an excess of neurotic energy or acute anxiety which he could no longer control. He asked him to sit down, but Mr. Barboux refused, rushing off somewhere to do some other mystifying action.

  “I find this scurrying quite disconcerting,” the sheriff finally pronounced. “Is this one of your habits? Please, come sit with me so we can have a proper conversation.”

  Mr. Barboux hissed and grumbled, said things in bits and pieces that made no sense. “Much to do,” was all the sheriff could discern.

  “Fine then,” he replied coldly. “I will interrogate you standing up.”

  He went over to the bookcase and scanned the bindings. “Still no Bible,” he remarked to himself. “When do you have time to read all these books?” he asked, but received no answer. He followed Mr. Barboux over to the other side of the room. Because of his hunch, he always appeared to be acting slyly, as if he were trying to hide something between his feet, but in fact, it was impossible to tell his true motives. The sheriff watched him suspiciously. “What ever are you doing?” he asked with exasperation. “All this milling about like a terrified varmint!” he exclaimed, “is enough to drive one completely insane!”

  Once again, the stranger did not answer. It was then the sheriff noticed the main door had a padlock on it while the rest were either open or ajar that led into side rooms. “What's in there?” he asked.

  “Oh!” gasped the stranger, finally pausing for a moment. “Nothing you'd find useful. My work, I'm afraid, is quite beyond your comprehension,” he said, running across the room again.

  “Why's it locked? Don't you live alone?”

  “Alone?” Mr. Barboux scoffed. “I wouldn't exactly say I'm alone.” He laughed, then mumbled something to himself and disappeared momentarily into a side room. When he came dashing out again, he had an array of bottles without labels, of various sizes and colors, clanking together on a tray.

  “And what are all these for?” the sheriff asked.

  “These?” the stranger replied, resting them on top of a pile of books. “These are all potential medicines I've concocted. Of course I'll test them on animals first, ” he giggled and as he gazed over at the haphazard assembly of cages across the room partially concealed by a curtain, which had somehow eluded the sheriff's notice thus far, the animals suddenly went berserk, lashing out at the bars and making the most ghastly squeals, as if they understood exactly what the stranger had said. “And if one seems to work,” Mr. Barboux added calmly. “I'll try it on myself.” He then produced a horribly long needle with which he sought to demonstrate his procedure on one of the hapless animals.

  “Enough of this devilry!” the sheriff shouted. “Open that door at once or I'll break it down.”

  From beneath his robe, Mr. Barboux produced a huge ring of keys. Fidgeting with it, he dropped them upon the floor with a loud clang. The sheriff rushed over and pushed him out of the way. “Which one is it?” The stranger pointed toward the one with the triangular head. “That one,” he said and he backed away several paces. The sheriff undid the padlock and rushed into the adjoining room where a long table stood in the center, draped by a white sheet. An awful smell, like that of a morgue, permeated the room. The sheriff staggered back into the parlor, rummaged through the many boxes at his feet and found a tattered rag in which to cover his face so he could reenter the adjoining room. He then opened a set of small windows from ventilation and approached the elongated table, curious what the innate lump upon it was, covered by the sheet. The breeze flowing downward from the tiny windows he had opened suddenly kicked up the lingering dirt upon the floor and circulating the stagnant air, actually made the smell even worse. A corner of the coverlet jumped in the wind as if an invisible hand beckoned him to look beneath it. Lifting it slowly, the sheriff saw a cadaver split down the middle form the valley of the victim's chest all the way to his groin. Inside the corpse the various organs had been pinned back to allow a thorough examination. As far as the sheriff could tell, nothing had been removed except the heart, which he spied across the room, marinating in a tall jar.

  Suddenly the door he had entered through slammed shut, a key knocked a series of tumblers into place, a padlock click and then rattled, and behind the adjacent wall beside him, he heard the haphazard stumbling of feet echoing down a long hallway growing ever dimmer and dimmer. The cunning stranger had fled! He knew he could not catch him in time if he tried to follow him through the many doors he had locked behind him along the way and so, after kicking through the first door and reentering the squalid parlor, he proceeded down the front steps, circled around back, and ran as fast as he could down the garden path until he reached an open gate leading into the forest where the path diverged in several directions. He ran off to the right until he came to a clearing and then doubled back and veered off to the left, but found no trace of the stranger.

  Over the next few weeks, the sheriff diverted as much time as he could, tracking down the stranger. He stationed a deputy at his apartment above the apothecary, sent agents to the ordinaries and inns, and stationed men at various crossroads, but no trace of him was found. He questioned many villagers; no new eyewitnesses came forward, yet cows continued to die and people vanished. It soon became apparent, he needed help. He had too few men and not enough hours he could devote to the cause. But he also realized, to convince the other sheriff's to help (and go against the Court of Oyer and Terminer and the Reverend Parris), he needed more conclusive proof of the stranger's nefarious deeds than just stories, piles of old books written in alien languages, tortured animals and exotic elixirs.

  Of course he could enlist Jim Pickman. He had offered to help and he did have a sizable group of ruffains at his disposal who could work without the Reverend's knowledge who, if caught, could hardly be linked back to him, but the sheriff had his pride. His pride and his indomitable sense of duty. He and his men were The Law, Jim Pickman wasn't. How could he work with outlaws one day, and throw them in jail the next? Working with them, he concluded, would only cause him trouble later on.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  A week passed. Still nothing happened. Then he stumbled upon the bewildering case of Bridget Bishop, accused of killing a woman in the neighborhood, known previously to have fits of insanity. Dr. Hale later ruled it a suicide. Doubts abounded. The official report from Dr. Griggs, no doubt at the behest of the Reverend Parris, disagreed, insisting the scissors Bridget Bishop had were too small for her to mangle herself in such an egregious manner, and he went on to say that her death was impossible without the, “shadowy hand of witchcraft.”

  Even though the case had been processed by another sheriff, Sheriff Putnam, Sheriff Corwin was allowed to review the evidence and form his own conclusions as a, “professional courtesy,” among lawmen. Taking a second look, he discovered details both doctors had overlooked (or ignored). On her neck, concealed by the dried blood from her other wounds, was a single bite mark like two needle holes, very deep and inflamed, and her body was almost completely exsanguinated, which he determined was not possible by the other wounds alone.

  And then, another horrible discovery was made. This time by the beadle, a stodgy old bachelor completely devoid of succor, a stern adherent to church rules who carried with him, at all times, a heavily knobbed staff which he enjoyed walloping overly-eager boys and sermon-nappers (as he liked to call them), mercilessly upon the head, during Holy Mass. A chronic insomniac, he preambled the village streets at all hours of the night, looking for drunken fools whose skulls were, “particularly easy to crack.”

  These were his favorite pastimes.

  One night, during one of his evening rambles, he passed the cemetery and saw among the shifting shadowy light, a ghoulish figure, “withered and at times almost transparent like a mist,” he said, “clutching a bawling baby wrapped in a pink swaddling blanket.

  “Ghouls move quite slowly,” he added authoritatively. “Often plodding along in no great hurry. Now and then the fiend whispered to the infant, gazing at it salaciously with devilish eyes. The cemetery was very dark and so was the dirt road beside it. Hardly a candle was seen in a window and the nocturnal torch we call the moon, was extinguished. An owl hooted, wolves bayed in the distance, but everything else was deathly quiet. From the direction the ghoul traveled, north by northwest, I knew it was headed for the forest where there were many caves for it to hide in.”

  “Following that most unholy creature deep into the woods, it finally stopped before a cave, first placing the baby in the crook of a tree, then pushing aside branches, rocks, and scattered leaves, to reveal a secret entrance. I watched the creature from afar as it crawled through the narrow entrance with the bawling baby whose feeble arms struck out against the pale-faced ghoul in vain.”

  “Having little physical prowess, there was absolutely nothing I could do to help the wretched child. To enter a creature's den alone would have been foolhardy. I had to find help quickly. Ingersoll's Ordinary proved the closest place and though it is a loathsome place, one wholly unsuitable to a man of the cloth, I knew there was a good chance of finding Jim Pickman and his thugs there. Passing through the entrance, I clutched my purse, half expecting a pickpocket to rob me before I reached the back of the main room where Jim Pickman and his friends were seated. My words were brief; Jim Pickman's reaction immediate. He grabbed his blunderbuss from the nail upon the hearth and assembled his hunting party, some fifteen strong, armed with axes, daggers, and swords, and eagerly followed me back into the woods.”

  “But once in the forest, I soon became confused. Every hillock, path, and tree looked the same as another. We went in circles. Soon the men grew weary and wanted to turn back. Jim Pickman was very angry to say the least. Exhausted and humiliated, I could only stammer. My mind was in a great muddle. All I could remember for certain was that the ghoul had been a hunchback.”

  After this setback, Jim Pickman once again requested a meeting with the sheriff to formulate a strategic plan. He left word at his office several days in a row. The sheriff ignored him, telling his staff to always say he was out of the office whenever Jim Pickman inquired. The sheriff still intended to capture the stranger on his own and be the sole hero.

  Over the coming weeks, from eyewitness testimony, every lead turned out to be either completely false, lacking in concrete details, erroneous in one way or another, or reported too late to be of any value. He wound up chasing phantoms all over Salem Village, Salem Township, and the neighboring communities. Still, people disappeared, cows died from exsanguination, and many reported seeing a hunchback on every street corner.

  During all this, the witchcraft hysteria raged on, increasingly making demands of both the sheriff's time and men. He did not know how much longer he could carry out simultaneous investigations. After so many failed attempts and remonstrations from the Reverend Parris, many in the village, including his deputies, urged the sheriff to either give up the search for the stranger or to meet with Jim Pickman, who sat idly, waiting for his reply.

  The sheriff was furious. Once again, it was his pride which stopped him. “Who was Jim Pickman?” he asked himself. “Little more than a bandit,” was the reply. “No, the Law must prevail. It must! If not, the vigilantes of the world would take over,” he rationalized internally. He decided to try and capture the stranger once more.

  Reexamining the case, he realized all the attacks centered around Endicott's farm at night, and since Mr. Barboux no longer kept his lodgings above the apothecary, that meant he had found a new hiding place near his victims, a remote place, an inconspicuous place where no one would look during the day. The only places like that on the map were a few scattered cabins among the hills and swamps to the south and west of the farm, a large unsettled area, too large for he and his man to search thoroughly. He decided to change tactics. Instead of searching for the stranger, a task he now considered virtually impossible, he planned to lie in wait...to set traps, one near the Endicott's cowshed and another close to the taverns.

  To stall Jim Pickman, the sheriff told him he would be ready to meet in two weeks time. Jim Pickman had no choice but to wait. He could not lawfully hunt down the stranger on his own. Undaunted, he and his men carried on as usual, hanging about during the day playing cards, hunting, and gambling, while spending their nights drinking and carousing at the nearest tavern.

  Chapter 5

  The First Attack

  A few nights later, one of the patrols heard a lady scream. The noise came from a barren field several hundred yards away from the Endicott's cowshed. The deputies were all dosing. The first one to hear her, went back to sleep. The second chose not to get involved and rolled over. Eventually the third awoke, and after urinating at a base of a tree, roused the others, having the good sense not to investigate the scene alone. Together they chased the unknown assailant into the woods, and it was there, slumped against the exposed roots of a tree the victim was found, a middle aged woman from another town on her way to visit her sister. Foolishly, to save time, she had deviated from the main road, seeking a short-cut through the forest. The assailant ambushed her near the cowshed.

  Had the deputies not been on patrol, she most certainly would have been killed. Luckily, the bite inflicted upon her neck was not deep, the creature had not yet clamped down to feed on her, and after several minutes she was able to tell the deputy what had happened. He then escorted her to the Endicott's house where she found aid and shelter for the night.

  Meanwhile, the other two officers chased the attacker into the woods. In the impenetrable darkness, their oil lanterns nearly empty, the inexperienced deputies feared they would soon lose the trail. Neither wanted a reprimand from the sheriff. In desperation, one of them starting shooting into the brush.

  “I think I hit him!”

  The second officer was not convinced.

  “I'm sure of it,” the first officer boasted. “Wait until we get closer. You'll see.”

  The second officer hung back, veering off to the right, as the first officer hurriedly advanced toward the thicket where he had fired. Amid the brush, a body lay moaning. The first officer fired three more shots at close range.

  “See!” he shouted. “I never miss,” he said, placing one foot on the corpse to claim his prize.

  The second officer laughed.

  “Now what do we do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I'm certainly not carrying that bloody mess all the way back.”

  The first officer paused.

  “Give me your ax,” he said.

  The second officer passed it to him, handle first.

  “You might want to stand back,” the first officer smiled, and with both hands clutching the ax he cut off the ghoul's head and tossed it to his partner.

  Back at the station the deputies proudly presented the burlap bag to the sheriff, who, rubbing his chin a moment, replied, “That's not Mr. Barboux!”