American Vampires by Bob Curran

Author:Bob Curran
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Career Press
Published: 2012-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

And Tammy was just like her and certainly enjoyed a similar, if not greater, reputation than her sinister aunt. A short, rather stout woman, she had a mean way about her and was widely disliked by many of the inhabitants of Dogtown. She churned butter, which she sold, as well as baskets of berries, which she gathered in the surrounding countryside. Both women were incredibly foul-mouthed and were well known for their colorful and intricate curses. Their house stood at the end of the bridge, which spanned the Alewife Brook and actually marked the entrance to Dogtown. Consequently, anyone who entered the village—carters, tradesmen, or ordinary travelers—had to pass by their front door. As soon as she heard a sound on the bridge, Tammy would open a small hatch in the doorway, secured by a piece of string, in order to see who it was. If it was someone she didn’t really like (or even if it wasn’t) she would hurl a string of obscene imprecations at them as they passed by. Some of these curses also contained threats, for example, that ill-luck would befall them or that Tammy would visit them in some form during the dark hours of the night. It was this latter threat that alarmed many and gave rise to the vampire myth around her, for Tammy had two long tusk-like teeth. In fact, many people who traveled into Dogtown and who fell under her curses were terrified that Tammy would indeed visit them at night and attack them with these fangs, drawing blood and consuming flesh as they slept. Realizing this, Tammy (and Luce George) used such threats as a form of extortion, charging a kind of “toll” on all those who passed into Dogtown and beyond to Rockport. Many carters and other travelers who passed across the bridge paid this awful toll and were supposedly spared Tammy’s nightly visitations. Even so, the fact that she had made such threats and the fact that she had long and malformed teeth led to the rumors that she was, in fact, a vampiric being.

Tammy’s teeth must have been uncomfortable when she ate, for at some point she approached Captain John Morgan Stanwood, the village cobbler, who was also an amateur dentist. He took a pair of pliers and attempted to extract them, but without much success. Despite a lot of pulling and straining, he only managed to pull them a little further out, and in the process, he caused Tammy a great deal of pain, much to the delight of those whom she had terrified. Now, with her hideous teeth even more prominent, the vampire stories concerning Tammy spread even further, and passers-by became even more terrified of the strange-looking little woman. Her threats became even more vicious and her reputation both as a witch and a vampire grew, extending beyond the borders of Dogtown and into the Gloucester area and beyond. Stories of her traveling across Cape Ann in various guises—a bat, a crow, a black dog—were legion.

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