Vampires: The Recent Undead Part 1

VAMPIRES:.

The Recent Undead.

Edited by Paula Guran.

To Chelsea Quinn Yarbro:.

A woman to whom many who write (or read) vampire fiction owe more than they may realize.

Introduction.

" . . . every age embraces the vampire it needs."

-Nina Auerbach.

The year 2010 may have marked a new high point in the popularity of the vampire. Although Stephenie Myer's Twilight series (books and film), Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Mystery series and its HBO incarnation as True Blood, and the Vampire Diaries television series (based on L.J. Smith's young adult series of the same name from the nineties) all began earlier in the decade, their popularity hit blood-fever pitch in 2010. Films like Daybreakers and Let Me In (the American remake of Swedish film Let the Right One In based on John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel Lt den ratte komma) also made an impact. In the UK, even Doctor Who featured vampire-like creatures in an episode t.i.tled "Vampires in Venice." The Brits also enjoyed the second Being Human series-featuring a vampire living with a ghost and a werewolf-on BBC Three.

As for vampire fiction not (yet) on TV or film, it ranged from the "literary horror" of The Pa.s.sage by Justin Cronin to a bevy of best-selling urban fantasy and paranormal romance t.i.tles and series for both adult and young adult readers, There were children's books as well (including d.i.c.k and Jane and Vampires). The final two books of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate trilogy featured a "Victorian vampire slayer" while Seth Grahame-Smith mashed up the Great Emanc.i.p.ator with fangsters in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Vampires were inescapable.

Hundreds of thousands of words have been written about vampires, our fascination with them, and their meaning and place in our culture. If you want in-depth information, either scholarly or written for popular consumption, there's plenty available. The focus of this anthology is short vampire fiction published 2000-2010, but let's take a quick sip of the b.l.o.o.d.y background for context.

The idea of the vampire has probably been around since humanity first began to ponder death. In Western culture the vampire has been a pervasive icon for more than two centuries now, but the image of the vampire as something other than a disgusting reanimated corpse was profoundly reshaped in the early nineteenth century by a group of British aristocrats.

Mary Wollstonecraft G.o.dwin, Percy Sh.e.l.ley, Matthew Lewis, Lord Byron, and Byron's physician, Dr. John Polidori, decided to amuse themselves one damp summer 1816 evening in a villa on Lake Geneva by writing ghost stories. Mary G.o.dwin (who later married Sh.e.l.ley) created a modern myth (and science fiction) with Frankenstein, or Prometheus Unbound. Polidori picked up a fragment written by Byron and produced a story based on it: "The Vampyre." It featured Lord Ruthven, a seductive refined n.o.ble as well as a blood-sucking monster who preyed on others. The character was obviously based on the already notorious Byron himself.

"The Vampyre" became wildly popular, particularly in Germany and France. The theatres of Paris were filled by the early 1820s with vampire-themed plays. Some of these returned to England in translated form.

As Brian Stableford has written, " The Vampyre" was the "most widely read vampire story of its era . . . To say that it was influential is something of an understatement; there was probably no one in England or France who attempted to write a vampire story in the nineteenth century who was not familiar with it, one way or another." Poldori's story was certainly the inspiration for the serialized "penny dreadful" Varney the Vampire or, The Feast of Blood (1845-47) by (most likely) James Malcolm Rhymer. Varney appealed to the ma.s.ses, but was of even less literary merit than the short story to which it owed so much.

It took Sheridan le Fanu to craft a true literary gem with his novella "Carmilla," published in 1872. The tale of a lonely girl and a beautiful aristocratic female vampire in an isolated castle also brought steamy (albeit lesbian) s.e.xuality into the vampire mythos.

But it was Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (1897) that became the basis of modern vampire lore: Dracula was a vampire "king" of indefinite lifespan who could not be seen in mirrors, had an affinity to bats and aversions to crucifixes and garlic. He had superhuman strength, could shapes.h.i.+ft and control human minds. Stoker's vampires needed their native soil and the best way to kill one was with a stake through the heart followed by decapitation. There were humans who, like Abraham Van Helsing, hunted vampires . . . etc.

Not that Stoker's Count Dracula was originally all that he came to be. Stoker described him as a tall old man with "a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere." The Count's "eyebrows were very ma.s.sive, almost meeting over the nose" and there were hairs in the center of his palms. He also had bad breath.

True cultural permeation-and refinement of the Dracula archetype-came through later stage and screen adaptations. The silent film Nosferau (1922), for instance, took Dracula's nocturnal nature and turned it into the inability to survive sunlight. Bela Lugosi's portrayal (first on stage then, in 1931, on screen) of a suave foreign aristocrat in evening attire who seduced beautiful young women and slept in a coffin had much to do with the popular image of the count.

Various vampiric attributes and powers were added or subtracted in films and short stories in the decades thereafter. (Along with other innovations, Christopher Lee's Dracula "showed fang" for the first time in 1958.) But although the vampire thrived in those two media, no truly notable vampire novels were published until 1954 when Richard Matheson contributed the idea of vampirism as an infectious disease with apocalyptic consequence in his novel I Am Legend.

Other novels from the 1960s also added embellishments to the icon, but in the 1970s the image of the vampire changed radically. Fred Saberhagen's The Dracula Tape (1975) presented a sympathetic Dracula telling his own story. Stephen King downplayed vampiric eroticism, upped the level of terror, and focused on the vampire as a metaphor of corrupt power in his 1975 vampire novel 'Salem's Lot (1975). Anne Rice introduced a vampire with a conscience who needed others of his kind, in Interview With the Vampire (1976). King and Rice brought the vampire fully into the cultural mainstream.

Less well-known to the public, but highly influential, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro began her series featuring the first truly romantic and heroic vampire, the Count Saint-Germain, with Hotel Transylvania in 1978.

Meanwhile, millions had watched Jonathan Frid portray Barnabas Collins on television's Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows (1966-1971) as he transformed from an evil villain to a vampire seeking redemption and his long-lost love. Dracula was again portrayed (beginning in 1977 on Broadway and followed by a 1979 film) by Frank Langella, who de-emphasized the violence and stressed the supremely seductive.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s vampires came in all varieties in literature and other media: traditional monsters, heroes, detectives, aliens, rock stars, psychic predators, loners, tribal, erotic, s.e.xless, violent, placed in alternate histories, present in contemporary settings . . . the vampire became a malleable metaphor of great diversity in many forms, even-first in Lori Herter's Obsession (1991)-in the romance marketing category. A number of notable vampire novels were published in the eighties and nineties, but Anne Rice continued to make the firmest impression on the ma.s.ses as the best-selling queen of vampire novelists. The vampire also became graphically s.e.xual in the mid-nineties as well.

The 1990s also saw a number of vampire-themed anthologies of original stories and, consequently, more opportunities for short form vampire fiction. Among these were Ellen Datlow's Blood Is Not Enough: 17 Stories of Vampirism (1990) and A Whisper of Blood (1995); Love In Vein: 20 Original Tales of Vampire Erotica (1994) and Love In Vein II: 18 More Tales of Vampiric Erotica (1997) edited by Poppy Z. Brite and Martin H. Greenberg; and 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories (1995) edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg. Marking the centenary of the publication of Dracula, the mostly original The Mammoth Book of Dracula: Vampire Tales for the New Millennium, edited by Stephen Jones, was published in 1997. For the very adult there were highly eroticized vampires in anthologies like Love Bites (1994), edited by "Amarantha Knight" (aka Nancy Kilpatrick). For younger readers there was Vampires: A Collection of Original Stories (1991) edited by Jane Yolen and Martin H. Greenberg (1991). Genre magazines and anthologies provided other venues for short vampire fiction, even if they had no specific connection to the icon.

Toward the end of the last century-sometime after the release of Laurell K. Hamilton's fourth Anita Blake Vampire Hunter fantasy novel, The Lunatic Cafe (1996), perhaps during the second (1997-1998) or third (1998-1999) season of television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and just before the first of Christine Feehan's romance Dark Prince, the first of her Dark series (1999)-vampires started getting "hot."

The "good guy" vampire-usually s.e.xy, often romantic, sometimes redeemed or redeemable, sometimes ever-heroic-started to dominate pop culture. So did s.e.xy-but-empowered female vamps and kick-a.s.s vampire hunters.

The frightening vamp was most definitely still around, however, and making an impact. A few examples: films 28 Days Later (2002), I Am Legend (2007) Van Helsing (2004), and 30 Days of Night (2009), based on the 2002 comic book mini-series written by Steve Niles and ill.u.s.trated by Ben Templesmith. The novel Fangland by John Marks (2007) was an homage to Stoker-type scares.

The high literary metaphorical vampire (The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova, 2005) was still in our group psyche too, along with the viral/apocalyptic vamp (The Pa.s.sage, Justin Cronin, 2010), the comedic vampire (You Suck: A Love Story, Christopher Moore, 2007), the science fictional/sociological vampire (The Fledgling, Octavia Butler, 2007), and just about every other variety-new or old.

But the popularity of paranormal romance and urban fantasy vampires soared and at least seemed to be the numero uno vampire of the decade. Numerous best-selling series featured vampires and then Twilight, a vampire fantasy/romance for teens by Stephenie Meyer was released in 2005. It and the other three books of Meyer's saga were immensely popular, but the films based on the series propelled the romantic vampire hero to stratospheric levels of popularity. The True Blood TV series (based on Charlaine Harris's novels) helped fuel the bloodl.u.s.t.

What does all this mean? Pop culturists, scholars, pundits, various experts, and those who really have no idea but think they do will continue to weigh in. We'll leave the a.n.a.lyses to them.

In practical terms, for short vampire fiction it has meant a boom in anthology opportunities for original urban and paranormal romance stories and, increasingly, for both types of fiction written for the young adult market. Vamps also crept into many urban fantasy, paranormal romance, supernatural mystery, and cross-genre original anthologies without a specifically fanged theme. Even funny vampires found their way into anthologies in the oughts.

There seem to have been fewer occasions, however, for writers with other vampiric ideas to show their talents. But new stories still found their way into periodicals, non-vamp anthologies, and compilations of reprinted stories that included a limited number of original stories. (See page 427 for a list of vampire anthologies published 2000-2010.) The stories of Vampires: The Recent Undead were published from 2000 into early 2010. If you are an avid vampirist, you are sure to have come across some of them previously-this is, after all, a retrospective-but I think you'll also make some new discoveries. You will certainly find a wide variety of vampire stories herein. It is so diverse, I'm fairly sure not every selection will please every reader. But that is to be expected. This first decade of the twenty-first century seems to have been marked by division more than cohesion. The world of 2011 is not the same as that of the year 2000, nor even the world of 2007. New threats and, consequently, new terrors have arisen. How we face those fears-or escape them-has a lot to do with our preferences in vampires.

Maybe we "needed" to embrace vampire heterogeneity in the past ten years.

As we enter a new decade, what kind of vampire will we embrace? Nancy Kilpatrick edited a 2010 anthology Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead. Its stories (none of which could appear here due to contractual necessity) may show a glimpse of the future of the vampire. Evolve: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead is slated for this year. If you are looking for a glimpse of the Next Vampire, you might get some clues there.

Meanwhile I hope you enjoy exploring these examples of the myth of the vampire as written-so far-for the New Millennium.

Paula Guran, January 2011.

The Coldest Girl in Cold Town.

Holly Black.

I chose "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown" for The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2010. Since then I've come to feel even more strongly that it has the makings of a cla.s.sic. Black's irony-rich tale has more characterization, world building, social commentary, and emotion than many novels can manage with a dozen times as many words.

Black is a best-selling author of contemporary fantasy novels for teens and children. Her first book, t.i.the: A Modern Faerie Tale (2002) was included in the American Library a.s.sociation's Best Books for Young Adults. She has since written two other books in the same universe, Valiant (2005), and Ironside (2007). Valiant was a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award for Young Readers and the recipient of the Andre Norton Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. Black collaborated with artist Tony DiTerlizzi, to create the Spiderwick Chronicles. The Spiderwick Chronicles were adapted into a film and released in February 2008. Black has co-edited three anthologies: Geektastic (with Cecil Castellucci, 2009), Zombies vs. Unicorns (with Justine Larbalestier, 2010), and Bordertown (with Ellen Kushner, 2011). Her first collection of short fiction, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories, came out in 2010. She has just finished the third book in her Eisner-nominated graphic novel series, The Good Neighbors, and is working on Red Glove, the second novel in The Curse Workers series, which will be released in April 2011. White Cat, the first in the series, was published in May 2010. The author lives in Ma.s.sachusetts with her husband, Theo, in a house with a secret library.

Matilda was drunk, but then she was always drunk anymore. Dizzy drunk. Stumbling drunk. Stupid drunk. Whatever kind of drunk she could get.

The man she stood with snaked his hand around her back, warm fingers digging into her side as he pulled her closer. He and his friend with the open-necked s.h.i.+rt grinned down at her like underage equaled dumb, and dumb equaled gullible enough to sleep with them.

She thought they might just be right.

"You want to have a party back at my place?" the man asked. He'd told her his name was Mark, but his friend kept slipping up and calling him by a name that started with a D. Maybe Dan or Dave. They had been smuggling her drinks from the bar whenever they went outside to smoke-drinks mixed sickly sweet that dripped down her throat like candy.

"Sure," she said, grinding her cigarette against the brick wall. She missed the hot ash in her hand, but concentrated on the alcoholic numbness turning her limbs to lead. Smiled. "Can we pick up more beer?"

They exchanged an obnoxious glance she pretended not to notice. The friend-he called himself Ben-looked at her gla.s.sy eyes and her cold-flushed cheeks. Her sloppy hair. He probably made guesses about a troubled home life. She hoped so.

"You're not going to get sick on us?" he asked. Just out of the hot bar, beads of sweat had collected in the hollow of his throat. The skin s.h.i.+mmered with each swallow.

She shook her head to stop staring. "I'm barely tipsy," she lied.

"I've got plenty of stuff back at my place," said MarkDanDave. Mardave, Matilda thought and giggled.

"Buy me a 40," she said. She knew it was stupid to go with them, but it was even stupider if she sobered up. "One of those wine coolers. They have them at the bodega on the corner. Otherwise, no party."

Both of the guys laughed. She tried to laugh with them even though she knew she wasn't included in the joke. She was the joke. The trashy little s.l.u.t. The girl who can be bought for a big fat wine cooler and three cranberry-and-vodkas.

"Okay, okay," said Mardave.

They walked down the street and she found herself leaning easily into the heat of their bodies, inhaling the sweat and iron scent. It would be easy for her to close her eyes and pretend Mardave was someone else, someone she wanted to be touched by, but she wouldn't let herself soil her memories of Julian.

They pa.s.sed by a store with flat-screens in the window, each one showing different channels. One streamed video from Coldtown-a girl who went by the name Demonia made some kind of deal with one of the stations to show what it was really like behind the gates. She filmed the Eternal Ball, a party that started in 1998 and had gone on ceaselessly ever since. In the background, girls and boys in rubber harnesses swung through the air. They stopped occasionally, opening what looked like a modded hospital tube stuck on the inside of their arms just below the crook of the elbow. They twisted a k.n.o.b and spilled blood into little paper cups for the partygoers. A boy who looked to be about nine, wearing a string of glowing beads around his neck, gulped down the contents of one of the cups and then licked the paper with a tongue as red as his eyes. The camera angle changed suddenly, veering up, and the viewers saw the domed top of the hall, full of cracked windows through which you could glimpse the stars.

"I know where they are," Mardave said. "I can see that building from my apartment."

"Aren't you scared of living so close to the vampires?" she asked, a small smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.

"We'll protect you," said Ben, smiling back at her.

"We should do what other countries do and blow those corpses sky high," Mardave said.

Matilda bit her tongue not to point out that Europe's vampire hunting led to the highest levels of infection in the world. So many of Belgium's citizens were vampires that shops barely opened their doors until nightfall. The truce with Coldtown worked. Mostly.

She didn't care if Mardave hated vampires. She hated them too.

When they got to the store, she waited outside to avoid getting carded and lit another cigarette with Julian's silver lighter-the one she was going to give back to him in thirty-one days. Sitting down on the curb, she let the chill of the pavement deaden the backs of her thighs. Let it freeze her belly and frost her throat with ice that even liquor couldn't melt.

Hunger turned her stomach. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten anything solid without throwing it back up. Her mouth hungered for dark, rich feasts; her skin felt tight, like a seed thirsting to bloom. All she could trust herself to eat was smoke.

When she was a little girl, vampires had been costumes for Halloween. They were the bad guys in movies, plastic fangs and polyester capes. They were Muppets on television, endlessly counting.

Now she was the one who was counting. Fifty-seven days. Eighty-eight days. Eighty-eight nights.

"Matilda?"

She looked up and saw Dante saunter up to her, earbuds dangling out of his ears like he needed a soundtrack for everything he did. He wore a pair of skintight jeans and smoked a cigarette out of one of those long, movie-star holders. He looked pretentious as h.e.l.l. "I'd almost given up on finding you."

"You should have started with the gutter," she said, gesturing to the wet, clogged tide beneath her feet. "I take my gutter-dwelling very seriously."

"Seriously." He pointed at her with the cigarette holder. "Even your mother thinks you're dead. Julian's crying over you."

Maltilda looked down and picked at the thread of her jeans. It hurt to think about Julian while waiting for Mardave and Ben. She was disgusted with herself, and she could only guess how disgusted he'd be. "I got Cold," she said. "One of them bit me."

Dante nodded his head.

That's what they'd started calling it when the infection kicked in-Cold-because of how cold people's skin became after they were bitten. And because of the way the poison in their veins caused them to crave heat and blood. One taste of human blood and the infection mutated. It killed the host and then raised it back up again, colder than before. Cold through and through, forever and ever.

"I didn't think you'd be alive," he said.

She hadn't thought she'd make it this long either without giving in. But going it alone on the street was better than forcing her mother to choose between chaining her up in the bas.e.m.e.nt or s.h.i.+pping her off to Coldtown. It was better, too, than taking the chance Matilda might get loose from the chains and attack people she loved. Stories like that were in the news all the time; almost as frequent as the ones about people who let vampires into their homes because they seemed so nice and clean-cut.

"Then what are you doing looking for me?" she asked. Dante had lived down the street from her family for years, but they didn't hang out. She'd wave to him as she mowed the lawn while he loaded his panel van with DJ equipment. He shouldn't have been here.

She looked back at the store window. Mardave and Ben were at the counter with a case of beer and her wine cooler. They were getting change from a clerk.

"I was hoping you, er, wouldn't be alive," Dante said. "You'd be more help if you were dead."

She stood up, stumbling slightly. "Well, screw you too."

It took eighty-eight days for the venom to sweat out a person's pores. She only had thirty-seven to go. Thirty-seven days to stay so drunk that she could ignore the buzz in her head that made her want to bite, rend, devour.

"That came out wrong," he said, taking a step toward her. Close enough that she felt the warmth of him radiating off him like licking tongues of flame. She s.h.i.+vered. Her veins sang with need.

"I can't help you," said Matilda. "Look, I can barely help myself. Whatever it is, I'm sorry. I can't. You have to get out of here."

"My sister Lydia and your boyfriend Julian are gone," Dante said. "Together. She's looking to get bitten. I don't know what he's looking for . . . but he's going to get hurt."

Matilda gaped at him as Mardave and Ben walked out of the store. Ben carried a box on his shoulder and a bag on his arm. "That guy bothering you?" he asked her.

"No," she said, then turned to Dante. "You better go."

"Wait," said Dante.

Matilda's stomach hurt. She was sobering up. The smell of blood seemed to float up from underneath their skin.

She reached into Ben's bag and grabbed a beer. She popped the top, licked off the foam. If she didn't get a lot drunker, she was going to attack someone.

"Jesus," Mardave said. "Slow down. What if someone sees you?"

She drank it in huge gulps, right there on the street. Ben laughed, but it wasn't a good laugh. He was laughing at the drunk.

"She's infected," Dante said.

Matilda whirled toward him, chucking the mostly empty can in his direction automatically. "Shut up, a.s.shole."

"Feel her skin," Dante said. "Cold. She ran away from home when it happened, and no one's seen her since."

"I'm cold because it's cold out," she said.