Later that week, the Pallbearers Club served a closed-casket ceremony for a John Doe who froze to death in his encampment along the tracks between the Montserrat and Pride’s Crossing train stations. After the decidedly non-celebratory service, Mercy and I attempted to rally our spirits, picking up food, and at my suggestion (I said something lame about a punk picnic), going to Lynch Park. The temperature was warm enough to remind us spring might grudgingly return to the region one last time, but cold enough that the large grass park with its two rocky beaches and a rose garden was deserted but for a few people walking dogs, Invisible Manned inside knitted hats and long, collar-up overcoats.

We entered the garden, passing between brick pillars adorned with stone plaques. Mercy read the engraved warning aloud: “ ‘Whosoever enters here let him Beware’ ” and “ ‘For he shall nevermore escape nor be free of my spell.’ ” We followed a short brick walkway carving through dead grass and passed under skeletonized tree branches. The hibernating rose garden opened before us and we continued down a small set of stairs and perched on the not-quite-twin marble lion statues. With lions safely beneath us, we greased our hands with overly fried chicken fingers.

I said, “Maybe I should write my stupid paper on this rose garden.”

Mercy loosened a noise that was less apathetic than a grunt, so I told her about the assignment and how I was freaking out because I had no idea what I was going to write about.

She responded as though waiting for me to broach this very topic. “You could write about my namesake. She’s a New England vampire.”

Ugh!

I heard her wrong and started in about how two students were already writing about victims of the Salem Witch Trials.

“I didn’t say anything about witches. I said a vampire. Not the movie kind either. And she’s from Rhode Island. Not Salem. Everyone’s sick of Salem.” Mercy launched into a story I’d never heard before yet was also familiar. It was great and awful and scary in the way all folktales about dying young were great and awful and scary.

I said, “Where did you hear all that? That sounds amazing but …”

“But what.”

“I need to be able to cite sources and—”

“What, you think I made it up?”

“No, but—”

Mercy said “But” again, at the same time as me, and louder, swamping my “but.”

“I thought, I don’t know … it’s one of those oral-tradition kind of things.”

“It’s settled. You will write your paper on this, and I’ll help you find sources. Next weekend we’ll road trip.”

* * *