Most men lead lives of quiet desperation before getting their faces ripped off by death hounds. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats as allies against the hellspawn. 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—living is so dear, and shambling zombie existence so mean. So I have travelled a good deal in Concord, my AK-47 loaded only with silver bullets; everywhere, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways, like the Brahmins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, head downward, over flames; or epidemic ghosts exiled forever to other places or executed by the demon kings.

I was walking home, keeping pace with a different drummer, when a screeching of fangs flew at my face; barely interposed I a forearm and shook off the beast when it leapt like Niagara at my throat once again. A werewoodchuck! It wished to suck out all the marrow of life. Ducking and twisting, swinging my AK-47 around from my back, I aimed and fired—alas, all $28.12 1/2 of bullets had been consumed in the battle between the giant robot black ants and the giant robot red ants. I improved the circumstance of my silver surveyor’s protractor and stabbed the werewoodchuck through the heart, whereupon with an otherworldly scream and a thick, poisonous cloud (cumulonimbus) of yellowish green vapor, he expired. I devoured him, partly for experiment’s sake and partly to steal his life points; it afforded me but a momentary enjoyment.

Another morning, after a still winter night, I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me. There was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, or wander undead and malodorous. I proceeded to survey Walden Pond with compass and chain and sounding line, when my touch activated the Chain and turned it into a Portkey, transporting me to Concord Cemetery. Handsome Nate was there, until Peter Pettigrew appeared from the darkness and, on the command to “Kill the Pond Lily” from He Whose Name Is Still In Copyright, fired a Killing Curse. Nate was dead! His spirit spoke from beyond mortality, a pale birthmark glowing on the mist of his spirit-form—"Henry, take my body back, will you? Bury it with the other Hawthornes."

The sun is but a morning star that kills vampires.