Page 3 of Of Faith and Fangs

“I should tell you,” Mr. Brown said hesitantly, “Mercy can be... persuasive. She has a way about her—a way of making the wrong seem right.”

“The devil’s oldest trick,” Daddy nodded. “But Alice is strong in faith. Aren’t you, daughter?”

“Yes, Daddy.” The response was automatic, ingrained from childhood.

But as Mr. Brown and Daddy began discussing the practical arrangements for tomorrow’s visit, doubt crept in like the shadows lengthening across the church floor. Was I truly strong enough? Or was I just a girl playing at faith, untested by real temptation?

Apparently, Mr. Brown had a few things to show me. Things that would give me a better idea of how far into these dark arts Mercy had actually fallen. It was a bit much for a girl of my age and naivety, but it was an education I’d better receive sooner than later.

Chapter 2

We stepped into the biting January air, our breath crystallizing before us like the ghosts. Night had fallen completely now, wrapping Exeter, Rhode Island, in a shroud of darkness broken only by scattered windows glowing with lamplight. Daddy walked on one side of me, his tall frame casting a long shadow across the frost-stiffened ground. George Brown trudged on my other side, a man visibly collapsing under grief’s weight, yet somehow still standing. The cold seeped through my woolen coat, but I welcomed it—the sharp bite of winter always felt cleaner than the stifling heat of sickrooms.

The three of us moved in silence down the narrow street. Our footsteps echoed against the wooden boardwalks, a hollow, empty sound that matched the hollowness inside me. I’d agreed to something I wasn’t sure I could deliver. Salvation for a witch? Was that even possible? Was that even my right to attempt?

“It’s not far,” Mr. Brown said, his voice startling in the quiet. “Just past the mercantile.”

I nodded, though I already knew where the Brown house stood. Exeter wasn’t large enough for secrets about locations. But it was large enough for secrets of other kinds, apparently.

A dog barked somewhere in the distance. The sound hung in the frigid air, unanswered.

“You’re very quiet, Alice,” Daddy observed, though his tone suggested he approved of my silence.

“I’m praying.” A half-truth. The noise of my mind largely drowned my prayers out—doubt and fear and curiosity all tangled together like yarn that had fallen to the floor to be batted about by a cat.

“Good girl,” Daddy said. I felt a stab of guilt for the deception.

We turned down a side street where the houses stood closer together, shoulders touching like mourners at a funeral. The Brown home was the third one down—a modest two-story structure with dark windows and a small front porch. Unlike the other houses on the street, no smoke curled from its chimney.

The door creaked open, revealing a dark interior that smelled of wood polish and something else—loneliness, perhaps, if loneliness had a scent.

Mr. Brown struck a match, touching it to an oil lamp that cast wavering light across a narrow hallway. “This way,” he said, leading us toward what I assumed was the parlor.

I followed, noting the heavy Bible on the hall table, the austere cross hanging on the wall. A proper Christian household, by all appearances.

The parlor was cold, but Mr. Brown quickly knelt before the fireplace, arranging kindling and logs with practiced movements. “Please, sit,” he said, gesturing to the chairs arranged in a semi-circle before the hearth.

I perched on the edge of a high-backed chair, my eyes drawn to the bookshelves that lined one wall. Volumes of religious texts dominated—commentaries on scripture, histories of the church, sermons and theological writings from the likes of John Owen. A proper elder’s library.

The family portraits arranged on the mantelpiece told their own story. George Brown as a younger man, standing stiffly beside a seated woman with hair long, curly and dark as Mercy’s. A boy who must be Edwin, Mercy’s brother, sitting stiff and straight faced. And Mercy herself—perhaps fifteen in the photograph—her eyes bright with an intelligence that seemed to challenge the camera itself.

“That was taken three years ago,” Mr. Brown said, noticing my gaze on the portrait. “Before Margaret—my wife—passed.”

“Where’s your son?” I asked. “Surely you didn’t leave him alone in this cold house.”

“With his aunt for the evening,” Mr. Brown confirmed. “I’ll retrieve him in the morning.”

The fire caught, flames licking tentatively at the logs. Mr. Brown remained kneeling before it a moment longer than necessary, as if drawing strength from the growing warmth.

“You have a lovely home.” The politeness was automatic.

“It was,” Mr. Brown agreed as he finally rose and took a seat opposite me. “When it was full.”

Daddy settled into the chair between us, his posture rigid as always. “Perhaps you should tell Alice more about Mercy’s condition,” he prompted. “The physical and the... spiritual aspects.”

Mr. Brown nodded, reaching for the portrait of Mercy. He cradled it in his large hands, thumbs brushing the wooden frame. “The consumption came on suddenly last summer,” he began. “One day she was helping with the church picnic, the next she was coughing blood into her handkerchief.”

I knew that progression all too well. The sudden onset, the rapid decline. I’d watched it take Mama and others.

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