An Exeter Vampire

by Brett Rutherford

Here is another little lesson in how line length can be used to create a special effect. This poem is about the famous Rhode Island vampire, Sarah Tillinghast, who comes back to kill off her family members one by one. (The family members most likely died of tuberculosis.) I wanted to create the effect of weakness, being out of breath, and suffocation. So instead of writing in the customary blank verse (10 syllables per line), I experimented by having the poem's lines being nine syllables long. They are cut short. The opening line, "She comes back ----- in the rain --- at midnight" is halting, 3 x 3, supporting the idea of being short of breath.

She comes back, in the rain, at midnight.

Her pale hand, not a branch, taps the glass.

Her thin voice, poor Sarah Tillinghast

whines and whimpers, chimes and summons you

to walk in lightning and will’o wisp

to the hallowed sward of the burial ground,

to press your cheek against her limestone,

to run your fingers on family name,

to let the rain inundate your hair,

wet your nightclothes to a clammy chill,

set your teeth chattering, your breath a

tiny fog within the larger mist.

You did not see her go before you,

and yet you knew she was coming here.

Soon her dead hand will tap your shoulder.

Averting your eyes, you bare your throat

for her needful feeding, your heat, your

heart’s blood erupting in her gullet.

You will smell her decay, feel the worms

as her moldy shroud rubs against you.

Still you will nurse the undead sister,

until her sharp incisors release you

into a sobbing heap of tangled hair,

your heart near stopped, your lungs exploding,

wracked with a chill that crackles the bones.

The rain will wash away the bloodstains.

You will hide your no more virginal

throat like a smiling lover’s secret.

Two brothers have already perished—

the night chill, anemia, swift fall

to red and galloping consumption.

Death took them a week apart, a month

beyond Sarah’s first night-time calling.

Honor Tillinghast, the stoic mother,

sits in the log house by the ebbing fire,

heating weak broth and johnny cakes.

One by one she has sewn up your shrouds—

now she assembles yet another.

She knows there is no peace on this earth,

nor any rest in the turning grave.

Storm ends, and bird songs predict the sun.

Upstairs, in garret and gable dark,

the children stir, weak and tubercular,

coughing and fainting, praying for breath.

The ones that suck by night are stronger

than those they feed on, here where dead things

refuse the Lord's sleep in Exeter,

sing their own epitaphs in moon-dance,

and come back, in the rain, at midnight.

_____

Exeter, Rhode Island’s “vampire” case of 1799 ended with the exhumation and destruction of the corpse of Sarah Tillinghast after four siblings followed her in death by consumption. They burned Sarah’s heart and reburied all the bodies.