*A true tale of grief, fear, and fire in 1892 Rhode Island*
They called it *consumption*, because it consumed you—slowly, cruelly. First the cough, then the fever, then the wasting. One by one, the Brown family of Exeter, Rhode Island, faded like breath on a windowpane.
First went Mary Eliza, the mother. Then Mary Olive, the eldest daughter. Then Edwin, the son, left for Colorado in a desperate bid for dry air and healing. And then, in the bitter winter of 1892, Mercy Lena Brown—just 19—died.
But Edwin returned home still sick. Pale. Weak. Dying.
The townsfolk whispered. Too many Browns had died. Too quickly. Too completely. And Edwin—he was being *drained*. Not by disease, they said. By the dead.
The villagers remembered old tales. From Europe, yes—but also from their own soil. In Vermont, they’d burned the heart of Frederick Ransom. In Connecticut, they’d dismembered corpses. In rural New England, the dead were not always dead. Sometimes, they fed.
So they came for Mercy.
Two months after her burial, they exhumed her grave. Her body, unlike the others, was strangely preserved. Her hair had grown. Her nails, too. And—most damning of all—there was blood in her heart.
They removed it.
They burned it.
They mixed the ashes with water and gave it to Edwin to drink.
This was not a horror story. This was *medicine*, by 19th-century standards. A folk cure. A desperate act of love and fear.
Edwin died anyway.
But Mercy lived on—in legend. Her grave, in Chestnut Hill Cemetery, still draws visitors. Some leave vampire teeth. Others leave flowers. All leave wondering: how could grief twist into ritual? How could love become exhumation?
And what if the dead *do* whisper?
