The Devil Was In The Water

The telling of this story still pulls at the center of my being. Even in death more times than not the spirits I encounter during my visits to Forest Glade are male, far to often the loudest of the ones who desire to speak. I have learnt the gentleness of women even in death avoid midnight hours preferring pre-dawn the time when the machismo men sleep. It was during one of my pre-dawn wanderings I met Mary Clements.

As I came upon her ghostly silhouette her radiating grief slowed my pace. The morning was clear, lit by the setting crescent moon, yet as I approached the kneeling silhouette of Mary Clements the air seemed to fill with a fog, a fog like mist of thousands of ever so small tears.

As a Historian of the Dead it’s not really that unusual to come across a grieving spirit, but in Mary’s case the grief was overwhelming. Before I could tap into Mary’s story my perception scanned the grounds around the kneeling departed soul. What I saw brought a tear to my eye.

The following is the story of Mary Clements, may God relieve her soul.

Her crying was long and deep, yet the sound was barely perceivable, where she knelt was not where she was buried. The ground appeared wet although the weather had been dry, the tears of the dead. As she looked my way I heard what she needed to say;

“Samuel had been first to come down with the fever, although he thought little about it. He was my strong boy, twenty two and full of life, he complained little when the fever took his early manhood strength.

My regret is deep for I thought nothing of it; he was so strong, so young. Then the sweating and strange rose colored spots appeared out of nowhere.

I tried, God I tried, but I could not bring his fever down.

By the second week the fever stilled remained, but now my mild mannered Samuel became confused, his conversations made no sense. I prayed, iced his head, and prayed more, God please don’t take my Samuel.

It was during his confusion I knew he had the “nervous fever” a deadly killer that spread through bad water.

By the third week the fever seemed to subside, but the unusual swelling in his abdomen was a bad sign. A mother knows things others don’t; my precious Samuel was leaving home for good. My grief was too much to bear; I was soon to bury my child, a task no mother should bare.

Even before the loss of Samuel, my little Hiram began to burn up. I was so focused on his bigger brother that I forgot to protect Hiram, but what could I do?

By the time of Samuel’s funeral Hiram’s body was ablaze with the nervous fever.

Hiram was only fifteen, young and sensitive; he idolized his big brother Samuel. He followed his older brother in life, and now in death, he died twenty four days later.

The devil was in the water! By the time Hiram passed we knew the water was bad, and I also drank the water.

Halloween 1850, forty nine days after Samuel died and twenty five days after Hiram died, I died. Taken by an invisible devil that lived in the water, a devil named Typhoid.

Here I pray, here I mourn, and may the tears I shed be shed for all mothers that suffered the loss of a child."