Of flesh eaters and blood suckers - Halloween Vampires
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| Photo "Old Graveyard" by Evgeni Dinev, courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
Vampires. Blood sucking, night loving demons, often taking the shape of humans, with monstrous appetites and powers. The stuff of nightmares, paperbacks and many a Hollywood blockbuster. Yet our fascination with vampires is not just as insatiable as their legendary bloodlust, it is as ancient, possibly, as humanity itself.
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| Photo by Anusorn P nachol courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhoto.net |
Stories about vampires have abounded in most cultures, taking all sorts of shapes or forms. They vary in terms of what the vampires look like, but usually involve blood-sucking, sometimes flesh-eating in order for the vampire to remain "alive". I use that word with caution, because by its very nature, a vampire is not alive, yet it is not entirely dead. It is a "revenant", a creature returning regularly from the realm of the dead to prey on the living.
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| Photo "From the Ruins" by hyena reality, courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
Or perhaps it is a figment of ancient imagination, from a time when the world was truly dark in the night, especially the long nights of winter, and when death was often close, often violent and often caused by elements mysterious and beyond the understanding of our forebearers.
I suppose it was inevitable when thinking about Halloween and telling creepy stories during the dark nights of winter, that I would turn my mind to vampires and the vampire stories. I remember seeing clips of old black and white vampire movies when I was a youngster and finding them terrifying.
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| Photo "Diffused Silhouette of a Man" by stockimages, courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
I'm not sure why I find vampires the most sinister of all so-called supernatural demonic creatures. All sorts of vampires. I find vampire movies hard to watch even these days. I didn't want to subscribe to the whole teen horror / vampire romance thing, nor to the gore brigade, so I had to think about what makes me really scared about vampires. There are a number of things, some of which will emerge in stories over the next few months. But the first thing that came to mind was the base elemental nature of my fear of vampires, which, I imagine, must be similar to everyone else's.
I used to find the shape-shifting unnerving to say the least, and the duplicity of what seemed to be people, possibly lovers or people close to the victims, turning out to be vampires. And then the slow leaching of the life force, the voracious feeding on blood and flesh, particularly that of the young and beautiful, by something ancient and evil and horrible that cannot die. And if it cannot die, how can it be vanquished? So my fears were based largely on a sense of helplessness, and that is the feeling that sparked off my story: The Last Lullaby.
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| Photo "Evil Reality" by Hyena reality courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhoto.net |
I chose to write about a point in the life of a character, a young woman called Kayla, when she was at her most vulnerable: alone and in the pains of birthing in an old hospital building in an ancient city just before the old hospital is closed down. Nearby are just two midwives, the last of the maternity team, a cleaner and a guard. But Kayla is alone, except for an unusual visitor. I avoided the "man in a black dinner suit" cliche, and the monster I imagined was a creature more ancient, a throwback to the ancient blood-sucking demons of mythology, who visits in the guise of someone who is going to help:
"........“I’ll help you said the woman. She moved over to the bed and laid her hand on Kayla’s swollen belly. Kayla let out a long moan.
“There, let’s try to sit you up.”
Kayla’s vision was blurred with the agony of
pain which was now constant and increased in waves of agony as her body
struggled with the birth. The room was
plunged into almost complete dark, the light only a dim glow in a ceiling that
seemed miles above her. The hunched old
crone approached, more of a huddle of clothes the a person. As she crept closer, Kayla could smell her – a
stale, dead smell, as if she had thrown on clothes that had been boxed up for
centuries.
“I can sit up by myself,” Kayla said, and
dragged herself up the bed. The crone
leaned closer, plumping up the pillows to support her back. This time Kayla caught sight of her skin, a
glimpse of a high cheekbone and a long, fine jaw, loosely covered by skin like
white crepe paper, pale as moonlight and laying untidily on bones. Kayla gasped with fright and the woman jumped
back into the shadows.
“Oh dear, is that another push coming?” asked
the woman, her voice dry and cracked as the bark of a cork oak. Kayla nodded and let out a long, low
moan. Her body convulsed and she
disappeared into the agony of pushing the baby out of its warm bed. When she opened her eyes, the woman she had
thought was a midwife was hovering by her knees, peering down at her.
“Nearly there,” came the crooning from that bent
creature. Kayla screamed, more from fear
than from pain, but her body convulsed again.
She gripped the edges of the mattress, her eyes screwed up and lids
pressed together, her lips curled up in the primeval grimace of birthing. Through the agony, she felt the touch of ice
cold fingers on the mound of her belly, a touch as sinister as that of a spider
running across your skin. When the
torment passed momentarily, Kayla looked and screamed again. This creature she had thought was a midwife
was nothing of the sort. Her hand,
pushing down on Kayla’s belly looked like a claw, something bone-white and
reptilian and with a cold that circled her above the heat of birthing. The hand pushed down, firm, persuasive,
easing, manipulating, edging the baby forwards........."
I set the story in the old St Bernard's Hospital in Gibraltar, when it was just about to close for the last time. It is entirely fictitious, but I spent many hours as a child walking past it and wonderting what horrors it hid in its cavernous corridors. I don't know why, but I always found it a spooky place even in daylight.
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