The Last Vampire: The Last Vampire

By T.A. Bound

They don't kill 'em like they used to.

St. Patrick's Day 1892, Exeter, Rhode Island. It wasn't over when she died. Prying her coffin open two months later transforms Mercy Brown into legend. The Last Vampire is based upon her incredible true story.

Mercy Lena Brown is 19 the first time she dies. The third in her family to mysteriously perish in rapid succession, after her mother and oldest sister. And when Mercy succumbs, her brother is also dying. To save the remaining family from their killer requires drastic and unspeakable action.

The New England vampire panic lasted from the late 1700s through the 19th Century. History has forgotten exactly when it started, but the precise moment the panic ends, however, is documented in history--and in the pages of this book. It spread across the region, terrifying New Englanders who exhumed graves seeking to purge the vampires lurking among them. Archeological discoveries in recent years have unearthed some of these desecrated graves, confirming persisting rumors and sketchy myths lasting a century since.

This is the terrifying true story of its final days. Only one can be the last.

 

Caution: This is based on historical facts which may be disturbing to some, including cannibalism and scenes of a sexual nature which, although neither graphic nor explicit, may make some readers uncomfortable. Don't say I did not warn you!

• Language: English
• Publisher: T.A. Bound
• Release date: Jan 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985393613

T.A. Bound

This is my first completed historical fiction/horror novel. My debut YA adventure, SHARKANO, was published in November, 2020 by Solstice Publishing and receiving 5-star ratings. As an attorney, I also published a non-fiction book on insurance claims. Raised on the Florida Gulf Coast, after college and Law School in South Carolina, I moved to Marietta, Georgia, my current home. My wife and I live with our adopted dog Maksim Gorky, named after the Soviet author, where I enjoy cooking, writing and reading history—particularly historical fiction.

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I dedicate this book to my wife.

Prologue

Bram Stoker died in 1912. By the time of his death, his novel Dracula had earned him a measure of fame, although greater acclaim awaited once Hollywood discovered his masterpiece. The Irish writer left copious stacks of papers for his family to search through after his death. His widow, Florence, unearthed notes, articles and unpublished short stories among those documents. Several of those stories she posthumously released in her husband’s name as Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories , on the eve of the horrors The Great War soon unleashed to decimate fields and cities and generations across Europe.

Amongst the papers Florence found were reams of meticulous research her husband used to craft the novel which granted the author his own measure of the immortality he bestowed upon his title character. Stoker exhaustively explored the extensive history and mythology of vampires across the world, a wealth of research amassed over a lifetime. Among them, the 1872 novella Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan, told from the point of view of a beautiful young woman preyed upon by a female vampire experts attribute as inspiring Stoker’s infamous novel. Stoker also studied historical accounts of vampirism, the best-known being the notorious Count Vlad Tepes of Transylvania. Those documents also contained accounts of lesser-known historic incidents, many now long-forgotten. Among them were newspaper stories reporting on the New England vampire panic which gripped large swaths of the Northeast beginning in the late eighteenth century and continuing throughout most of the nineteenth century.

Stoker’s collection of newspaper articles reported a strange and disturbing series of events occurring in Rhode Island five years before Dracula’s publication in 1897. Scholars believe these very newspaper accounts inspired Stoker’s character Lucy Westenra, the beautiful and vivacious woman who attracts multiple suitors, including Arthur Holmwood. The 1931 film version transforms her into Arthur’s sister, Lucy, whose beauty draws the deadly attention of Count Dracula.

Stoker based Lucy’s character upon a real woman from the small township of Exeter, Rhode Island. A girl, really, who never lived to see her twentieth birthday. In life, everyone knew her as Lena Brown. Upon her death in 1892, newspapers covering the bizarre story used her given first name, Mercy. Those articles captured Stoker’s attention, ending up among his prized personal effects.

The strange incident of Mercy Brown brought to a dramatic close the New England vampire panic. Today, history records her as the last vampire.

Each of the previous incidents during the vampire panic set out in the following story are true, historical incidents. The Tillinghast family. The Jewett City vampires. A mysterious coffin with the letters J.B. on its cover containing an otherwise unidentified, beheaded skeleton, femurs amputated and laid crossed atop his dry ribs along with the skull, creating in death a macabre, real-life image of a pirate flag. All are true stories—at least as recorded by history.

Real monsters appear in true stories. Fewer still where the identity of the monster and the form this monster took remain cloaked in shadows nearly 130 years later.

The life and death of Mercy Lena and other members of the Brown family is also true. I know this for a fact because I lived it. Lena was my big sister.

This is our story.

Chapter 1

Mary Brown

Well I remember the misty rain falling from bruised clouds in undulating waves since before daylight on the day they laid Mary Brown to rest. Precious little light penetrated those swollen December clouds. Steady drumming on the slate roof of Exeter Baptist Church resumed the moment Elder Edwin Wood opened by reciting his standard eulogy. As always, sprinkled liberally with personalized details of the departed’s life, in this case, the hardworking, respected and still handsome wife and mother of four children, all yet to reach their majority. Otherwise, he scarcely veered from the words also spoken over two other farmers’ caskets in as many weeks.

This time was different. Mary Brown was my mother.

Elder Wood’s funeral services in stark contrasted with his dark, Hellfire-and-brimstone revival sermons shouted from the pulpit on Sunday mornings. The emotional toll of the relentless pace of burials weighed heavy, and not only on inconsolable families of the deceased. The preacher wore an unfamiliar face. Relaxed and compassionate, rather than the pinched warning expression used to hold his flock’s attention on Sundays. The grieving no more wish to hear about the pits of Hell and the perpetual suffering of loved ones in eternal torment than he wanted to remind them amidst the pain of their personal tragedies. As the Old Testament teaches, to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together. Sunday mornings may be the time to cast stones, but that frigid December day, he carefully gathered them together. 

Sneezes punctuated homilies selected heedful of their comforting qualities. The preacher recited verses from the tattered pages of his well-worn Bible to assuage the gloom of my family sitting shoulder to shoulder in the front pew with stoic stillness. After every sneeze, each time he cleared his throat, his eyes involuntarily glanced up from the Bible to his parishioners’ concerned faces. Death’s frequent visits to this peaceful New England village since harvest turned each cough, every sniffle, into an issue of community concern.

The gathering sullen New England winter carried with it the certainty of long, bleak months ahead. Months filled with more funerals; a prospect more dismal should one of those laid to rest happen to be the town preacher.

By the time the choir’s eight members raised their voices with the first solemn strains of It Is Well With My Soul, accompanied by most of the three dozen in attendance, rain pelted the white plank walls of Chestnut Hill Baptist Church’s west side with the insistence of a thousand drummers lost in their own individual tempos. Near loud enough to drown out the mournful singing. A few degrees colder, a wind less cruel might have whipped this storm into a blizzard, rather than this miserable rain. Rain soaking the clothes of the hearty souls gathered in a ring around the wretched hole in the ground where my beloved mother would rest for all eternity.  

Small chunks of dark earth sloughed from the freshly dug sides, loosened by rivers of flowing runoff. No tears fell down my father’s burly, bearded face—George Brown’s four children must never see such signs of weakness. Raindrops evaded hats and umbrellas, effective disguises for any tears spilling down the cheeks of we three daughters or the son Mother left.

Most mourners retreated into the dry warmth of their homes before my father threw a handful of mud onto the shiny, wet wood of the black coffin. Glued by the deluge into a ball, this muck landed with a hollow thud. The three of us girls huddled together while our brother scooped up a handful of sticky dirt from the sodden mound. Almost seventeen, hands already strong from more than a decade of hard work on the farm, upon hearing the bang of the clump his father tossed, Eddie loosened dirt with his gentle thumb before sprinkling it through his fingers onto the pine plank separating him from the woman who nurtured him nearly until manhood.

A flash followed by a loud clap of thunder—rare this time of year—startled our grieving family enough to jump with fright before scurrying to the carriage waiting to carry us the mile back to our house. The preacher nowhere in sight, Father wheeled the carriage toward a home we knew never would again be the same.

THE FIRST BROWNS ARRIVED in the small Rhode Island town of Exeter so long ago no one remembers precisely when. Mother’s family arrived more recently, ahead of the exodus fleeing Ireland’s cursed potato harvests when she had been but a freckle-faced girl with curly, coal-black hair cascading down over her forehead, almost hiding famous sparkling eyes of brilliant blue. Eyes that laughed at my father’s jokes in the one-room schoolhouse where they met. Eyes that ensnared him before he ever considered admitting an attraction to girls.

Famous for those eyes and her ready smile by her teen years, a smile when flashed to the boys at school carrying sufficient power to provoke more than a few schoolyard brawls. Several times my father emerged the victor of those fights. Although still a skinny boy under overalls hanging loose from his shoulders, transformed by years of hard labor. Of the chores his father demanded around the farm, Father held his own. When his father passed, our farm passed down to my father. The Brown Farm, as everyone in Exeter referred to it, handed down through the generations to the eldest surviving son.

Landlocked and situated ten miles north of Narragansett and the Atlantic coast, back during their childhood, the town bustled with activity. Whitewashed houses built of stone and wood dotted the farms where the majority of the town’s men toiled. Rocky soil produced those stones, so ubiquitous they dulled ploughs and hindered the county’s farms from producing what the otherwise fertile soil should grow. Old-timers still joke that the one crop Exeter’s soil is best suited to grow is granite.

While never growing large enough to build a town center proper, Exeter’s merchants opened stores along the two major roads, clustered around the center of our community, the schoolhouse. There, farmers came for their supplies and to deliver their crops at harvest, selling to wholesalers who carried them to market in Providence or to Kingston, the nearest train station. From there, rails carried their fruits and vegetables to feed the hungry, growing population of New York.

Other than the merchants, most local men not toiling on farms found employment at Lawton’s Mill down on Ten Rod Road, its massive wooden structure our town’s largest. Its towering peaked roof, running the length of the second story, stood on high ground visible as a landmark from over a mile in every direction. Its massive, slow-turning wheel painted bright red generated the power the mill relied upon. Only during the coldest days of winter did that wheel stop, on those rare occasions when the water driving it froze. An unusual event this close to the coast.

Hundreds more lived in the township when Mother and Father still attended the small, white schoolhouse. Perhaps two hundred more than a paltry 1,310 the census tallied a few years before tragedy struck my family. The War Between the States exacted its terrible toll on Exeter, though no more grievously than countless other farming towns throughout New England. That wretched war ended nearly thirty years before, so the carnage on faraway battlefields to the south failed to explain the declining population in the decades since.

While our town plodded along over time, its failure to thrive defied rational explanation. Even the influx of Irish with their renowned proclivity for producing enormous families did nothing to staunch the decline. Rumors passed on by whispering tongues notwithstanding, the cause of Exeter’s population decline remains shrouded in mystery.

Back when my mother married Father more than twenty years before, the young couple dreamed of raising children in this peaceful, idyllic town. A hometown of kind neighbors, whether next door or on the farthest side of town, caring folk eager to lend a hand to those in need. Neither dreamed of ever leaving. Now that my father had buried his bride in the ground not more than a mile from where she bore and raised her family, she never would leave.

FATHER ADDRESSED THE eldest of us girls with sorrow the following morning over eggs and sausage we dutiful womenfolk prepared, the familiar aromas comforting. Comments intended for each of us children. Mary Olive, now you are lady of the house. That will require additional effort—from all of you. Your mother’s shoes will be hard to fill.

The storm ended during the night, leaving the kitchen filled, instead, with silence. The weight of our father’s understatement fell heavy upon all of us. Mother’s ceaseless sweat and toil cooking, cleaning, working the fields during planting and harvest provided us children the opportunity to attend school. Those efforts may have failed to garner the full appreciation deserved during her lifetime, but in the days since her death, and before that, during those terrible weeks when her strange illness weakened her day by day, made her abundant sacrifices clear. Each of us was on pace to graduate from high school, an achievement denied her. An early marriage and the farm work attendant with it ended her schooling during tenth grade. My heart is thankful to this day that Mother lived to witness the dignity of her eldest daughter’s graduation with her son only months from following her example. Mary Olive’s proud success filled our mother with immense joy, right until the very end.

I promise to give it my best, father. As eldest daughter, she accepted this burden with dire resignation. Most of her friends already married by then, sometimes we heard women at church ask the most impertinent, prying questions. Why don’t you have a beau? When do you intend to tie the knot with one of the town’s eligible young men? The answers to those questions more mysterious and bothersome to my sister than the nosy busybodies who asked.

Mary Olive’s beauty surpassed most other girls who attended school with her and those who left to marry before graduation. Blessed also with a powerful intellect, an affinity for hard work, duty and religious fervor—logical explanations failed to account for her failure.

Still only twenty, therefore not yet a spinster, elevation to lady of her father’s household with the added responsibilities of minding three younger siblings further handicapped her already dwindling chances of attracting a suitable husband. Mother prepared me to ensure I am ready for when the time arrived. She knew.... Unable to continue with her thought, she dabbed her mouth with her napkin, staring at it in silence when returned to her lap.

George directed his attention to us younger children with stern eyes and a steady voice to match. To fulfill your mother’s wishes, you will all remain in school. But your education does not relieve you from your responsibilities around the farm. You will each find time to assist your sister. We will need to pull together.

He scanned the grim faces around the table, each bestowed with our mother’s blue eyes, but of varying shades reflecting various aspects of her character. Mary Olive inherited her beauty, darkened by solemnity. Raven curls came from George’s father and his Scottish roots, softened by eyes the color of a summer sky. Edwin’s face more closely resembled his mother, yet with dark blonde hair perpetually tousled by invisible wind. Everyone called him Eddie, and his handsome face is still clear in my mind’s eye. With eyes of sapphire, like our mother’s, imbued with her spirit of adventure, but his tall, wiry frame a direct reflection of our father, about the only trait he passed along to his son.

Mercy Lena was a direct throwback to my Mother’s mother, an Irish immigrant renowned as an elegant, majestic beauty in her day. Alone among us with straight, light brown hair that sparkled uncommon colors in the sun, the freckles, eyes matching our brother’s in color but slier, which gave the impression of being ever aware of things no one else noticed. They say I am all my father, then a tiny, ten-year-old female version earning me the accurate label of daddy’s girl, my round face framed by hair only a few shades lighter than coal.

Silent gazes returned his, with sorrowful nods acknowledging how our mother’s death upended our lives. Eddie answered for us. Of course we’ll pull our weight, Father.

I will help, too, I added.

We all will, Mercy Lena promised with one of those smiles of hers, the disarming one capable of melting ice during a blizzard. Our father noticed it did nothing to change the pained expression on Mary Olive’s face.

The Lord will not ask us to shoulder a burden too heavy to bear.

That is true, Father.

Then do not fret about your burden. Your sister will soon become a woman. Once she completes her schooling, she can assume many of your responsibilities, George assured his eldest, confirming he understood her fears. Mother taught you to cook, didn’t she?

Oh, yes! She taught me everything. Mary Olive’s skeptical sideways glance made our middle sister question whether she may have missed some things. Almost everything.

And Mary Olive will make sure you learn anything your mother may not have had time to finish. Grim as things were in the grip of her illness, she never abandoned her firm belief she had so much more time.

And so it went. Each child bore our own share of the responsibilities left behind. I pitched in every way I could, arising early and eager with my sisters, working alongside them before and after school. Mother did prepare her girls well, albeit for a future far different than the life given her. All her life, she envisioned her beautiful daughters making advantageous marriages to prosperous merchants, perhaps a banker or ship’s captain. Not idle dreams left to chance. Her daughters would receive the education denied her to take full advantage of the innate intelligence accompanying the undeniable beauty God blessed each of us with.

And how God provided, allowing her to live long enough to see her older daughters catching the eye of not only sons of well-heeled farmers, but some of the most prestigious families around the county, too. Undoubtedly, the one thing she missed seeing with her own eyes had been Mary Olive’s marriage. Never in her life did Mother imagine her daughters coming to age while running this household without their mother there to complete the job of raising them. When that tragedy came to pass, though, those years of purposeful training prepared her girls, sufficient to equip the family to function smoothly.

And now, though her death an irrevocable change to this family, our home forever left empty by her absence, each of us children stepped forward to lift the family together. With precisely the resolute stoicism our mother taught us as her legacy.

Winter’s cold approach leaves no opportunity to rest on a farm. Father immersed himself in work, not a conscious intention to distract from the emptiness filling the house, nonetheless accomplishing that result. A determined expression on his wide face, ill-concealed under a still-dark beard, little changed from his usual countenance. Repairs left undone due to her illness during planting and harvest seasons now received his full attention. Upon returning from school one afternoon, Eddie found our father busying himself in the barn, weatherproofing for the winter and replacing warping or time-worn siding.

Need some help, Paw? Father motioned to tools and a replacement plank for one of the stalls, and Eddie joined in. This continued on bitter winter afternoons as the boy worked beside his father, who added to the rhythmic sounds of saw and hammer.

A natural pattern developed, one both new yet familiar. The same virtuous, puritanical work ethic which molded our parents now forged their children. To forge iron requires fire, the burning heat of the furnace harnessed by the sweat of the smith. Now our mother’s tragic death stood to shape her children, Father reminded himself daily. Trained not to complain, but in those rare instances we did, our lamentations fell upon deaf ears. Tragedy produces strength, no less required of his offspring than in anyone else. Tears and dwelling upon the past served only to further weaken us. Unacceptable weakness had no place in his family.

After bestowing upon Mary Olive the first name of her mother and the middle of her mother’s mother, my parents named their subsequent daughters after revered Christian virtues. Although named Mercy, the only time people called their second daughter by her first name was on those frequent occasions when she found herself in a spot of trouble. The exotic sound of her middle name, the family story went, enticed Lena to adopt it soon after taking her first halting steps on the hand-planed wooden floor of their house. Once she made that choice, she allowed no one to call her by her given first name.

Another daughter, born between Mercy and me, my parents named Faith. An epidemic of Whooping Cough swept through two years later, infecting most of the children in Washington County, including theirs. The older children proved sufficiently strong to survive the epidemic, but having always been a frail child, the toddler suffered a tragic lack of the strength to fight off the illness. After celebrating her second birthday, tiny Faith died.

Several months after her passing, the familiar stomach upset and aversion to food returned once again, reviving Mother’s once-flagging optimistic spirit, and when a baby emerged screaming and beautiful, they considered no name for me other than Hope.

MOTHER EASED INTO HER peaceful, final days. Pallor, aches and profound weakness set in some time before, but shielded within how long she suffered beneath a silent, steadfast belief that complaining is an unforgivable sign of weakness. Weakness of the body likewise infects the spirit. Right until the end, she claimed to feel fine, her strength uplifting as we watched her wither before us.

Gradually, almost imperceptible to us, her hair flecked with gray and drawn up into an ever-present bun dimmed its sheen. Merely a little tired is all, she dismissed our concerns, even after her legs grew too weak to carry her through the house, an exertion so taxing we became familiar with the well-worn path she took. A stop to lean on the high back of her chair at the dining table, again on the door frame to the front room, next supporting herself by leaning on the kitchen counter, she bravely insisting on cooking our meals until her final week. After that, a deteriorating condition confined her to bed most of her last days, where she slept much of the time.

How are you, Mother? Lena adjusted her quilt and checked the level of whale oil in the lamp left burning throughout the day.

Fine, honey. Slept for a few hours. I awakened only now from the most wonderful dream.

Oh, what did you dream about?

You know, I can’t recall. How odd. Right when I mentioned my dream, it vanished like smoke in a gust of wind. It usually happens that way.

I never remember my dreams, my sister said.

That’s the thing—in the past, I never remembered my dreams. Recent dreams, though, have left a vague memory, lingering just beyond my reach. Only the shadow they leave behind remains, never the dream itself. But they are beautiful dreams. Comforting, even if we lose them. 

Good, Mother, I’m glad. Something about this brought a tear to Lena’s eye, which she turned to casually brush away, preventing our mother from noticing. Later, after tucking me into bed, Lena raised it with our elder siblings while I pretended to sleep, both of whom also having heard tell of their mother’s mystifying dreams. Do you reckon those dreams mean anything?

Could mean nothing more than more sleep brings more dreams, Mary Olive guessed.

She told me it’s comforting, too, Eddie said, almost whispering. Strange how she never mentioned dreaming before this illness. Suppose it is some kind of omen?

Mary Olive snapped at him. Banish such thoughts! Sometimes people dream when they are ill. Happens with fevers all the time. Such pleasant dreams are a wonderful gift. Dreams to console her. If an omen, surely it is a good one. Don’t you think she looked better tonight? I think she’s showing signs of improvement.

If Doc Metcalf is right and she has consumption, shouldn’t she go away somewhere warm to take the dry air for the winter? Eddie glanced back and forth between his sisters, seeking support.

That is impossible. Who will accompany her? She’s far too weak to travel alone. Besides, it is too late to travel anywhere; winter is nigh. Mary Olive spoke with a final certainty.

Why can’t my dreams leave me with a pleasant feeling afterward? Lena’s hypothetical question required no answer, so Mary Olive directed full attention to her needlepoint. Eddie picked up his schoolbook and, realizing no answer was forthcoming, so did Lena.

MOTHER, WE ARE ALL here, Mary Olive said. From her seat on the edge of the bed, she held our mother’s hand between hers. The rest of us sat bedside on chairs dragged in from the kitchen. All but Father, who stood behind us near the door. Were you dreaming? You kept making sounds. Pleasant little sighs like you make when eating your favorite butterscotch.

No, none that I remember.

How do you feel, dear? Our father spoke in soft tones without stepping forward. Seeing his tears would not benefit us children at all.

Fatigued. Funny, isn’t it? All I do is sleep, yet remain tired as ever. Two coughs in quick succession sent an exchange of worried glances between the older children. Our frequent discussions of the doctor’s diagnosis and treatment outside Mother’s hearing sometimes became arguments, as we had varying degrees of skepticism and hope. Mary Olive’s insistence that an absence of blood when she coughed belied an erroneous diagnosis nagged at us, despite its irrefutable appeal to logic. Yet, the illness progressed according to Doc Metcalf’s dire predictions. Father discouraged such speculative talk, his faith in the doctor still absolute.

Someone remained in constant vigil by her side awaiting signs of waking or the unspoken fear of something worse. While awake, Mother enjoyed reminiscing with us, regaling us with her favorite tales. Lena stumbling upon a beehive, ruining a brand-new white chiffon summer dress by jumping into the muddy creek to escape the swarm’s stings. Eddie’s fight with Chalmers Gray during the harvest celebration right on the steps of the church when they were five or six years old. Mary Olive and her stray kittens, found heaven knows where, bringing them home where several still stood guard, ridding the house and barn of mice and rats. The hilarious gifts Father insisted on placing in our stockings on Christmas morning, from bent nails tied up with a bow to apple cores he ate, after which he handed